


Where Angels Fear To Tread

by nirejseki



Series: Aflameverse [3]
Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Also fluff, Alternate Universe - Serial Killers, Fix-It, Fix-It of Sorts, Gen, Len's orientation is serial killer, M/M, Mick Rory Defense Squad, murder murder murder GOOSE, read the warnings in advance, seriously guys SO MUCH MURDER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-25
Updated: 2017-03-25
Packaged: 2018-10-10 16:08:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,364
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10441626
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nirejseki/pseuds/nirejseki
Summary: Leonard Snart had a very tough childhood, and now he likes to murder people. Is that really so wrong?Okay, maybe it is, but that hasn't stopped him yet.(serial killer Len)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written to be the inverse of my "Aflame" story. Len has a very different approach to serial-killer-ing than Mick does. 
> 
> Specific warnings at the bottom.

They say childhood memories fade in time, but there are some moments in his childhood that Len remembers with perfect, crystal clarity.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

 _The first_ : he is six years old. His mother is not well, but she has permitted him to crawl into bed with her for the first time in months. “I will be gone soon,” she says to him, her hand caressing his curling hair. “And no one will watch over you but the angels.”

They do not mention Len’s father.

“The angels?” Len asks. “How will an angel help?” He does not mean to be skeptical, but his father is cold and cruel, ever since he was released from prison too early. Far too early. 

“An angel destroyed the first-born of Egypt,” his mother reminds him. “And the armies of Assyria.” Her eyes are distant and sad. “It was an angel that stopped Avraham from sacrificing Itzhak. A father sacrificing his own child, till an angel came to stop him…”

“An angel did all that?” 

“Oh, yes, baby. An angel comes to you with a sword of flame, flame and smoke and ash. An angel is destruction, baby; a message from God that some things should not be borne too long.” She sighs. “I bore my pain too long, _libi_ , my heart, and so it destroys me. Don’t let it destroy you.”

It.

She means _him_ , though Len does not know it then.

“Why?” he asks, unable to think of more. “I don't want you to go. Why?” He is the wicked child, then, asking for _me_ and not for _you_ ; but he has always known that he was wicked. His father has told him so, many times.

His mother’s gaze is distant. “The poison is in the care,” she says, and her eyes are fixed on the set of needles that sit on her counter. Her medicine, which Len’s father provides for her. She wants it all the time, and if she does not get it, she screams terribly. “Trust no one but the angels, my darling.”

Len nods.

She dies a week later.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

 _The second_ : he is seven years old. His father is angry, but not with Len. It is a business matter.

Len knows better to disturb his father when he shouts, especially when he is shouting downstairs, but the thumps and thuds and muffled groans nag at Len. He becomes thirsty. 

He goes downstairs for water.

His father sees him.

“Leo,” he calls, even though Len has not thought of himself as Leo since his mother died. His mother never liked the name Leo, saying that Leonard was her _lemele_ , her little lamb, and not a cowardly lion. Len told the school that he preferred Len, but he never told his father. “Come here.”

Len does not want to. He goes anyway. 

“Come here,” Len’s father says again, then turns to the two struggling men on their knees in the living room, both tied up with rope and gagged with cloth, held down by two big men each. They are trussed up like chickens, hands and legs tied together. Len’s father is puffing himself up as he talks to them, self-important and cocky. “Look here, my _kid_ has more guts than you. All you had to do was your part, but no. You just couldn’t ice the guy. Your _conscience_ –” and here Len’s father sounds mocking “– wouldn’t let you. A _child_ could’ve done it.”

The first man tries to speak, but the gag muffles his words.

“Leo, here, take this,” Len’s father says, and hands him a gun. It is heavy in Len’s hands, far heavier than the brightly colored water pistol he sometimes gets a chance to play at school, on particularly hot days. Len likes those games. 

He does not know what his father wants from him. 

“I’m gonna show you,” Len’s father tells the two men. “Or rather, I’m gonna show _you_ ,” he nods at the second man, who’s been struggling just as much, “since you didn’t fuck up this hit, you just went along with this idiot’s orders. You, I don’t have orders to ice for this cock-up, so I’m gonna be generous and let you live. But not you.” He jabs his finger at the first man. “You, you’re so weak. So _emotional_. It’s a liability. You couldn’t even do the job. So I’m gonna give you an example of how goddamn easy it is, my _kid_ could do it. Leo, hold the gun up to Mr. Wynters’ face, just the way they do it on the TV.”

Len obeys, because he knows better than to disobey his father. That way lies pain. He does not understand why he is doing this. Sometimes, on the TV shows his father doesn’t like him watching, someone will point a gun to someone else. It goes ‘bang’ and they clutch their chest and fall over sideways. Sometimes they shout or groan. They usually have time to say a few words – sometimes even a whole speech – but then they close their eyes and everyone else is sad. Or not sad, if the person was bad. Then they’re glad.

“Good boy,” Len’s father praises, and Len is happy that he has pleased his father. “Now you see that trigger there?”

Len nods.

“Pull it.”

“Like with the water gun?” Len likes the water gun. You can squirt it into people’s faces and they laugh, because it cools them down, when it’s too hot.

“Exactly so. But before you do, say ‘bye-bye’ to Mr. Wynters. And make it quick. You wouldn’t want him to hurt too bad, would you?”

The man before Len is struggling, screaming out words from behind his gag, but Len doesn’t understand him. He does not want to hurt the man. He does not want to be hurt.

“Bye-bye, Mr. Wynters,” he says, because his father told him so, and he pulls the trigger.

His hand jerks up and back, the recoil of the gun hurting his arm and making it stagger.

It’s nothing like on the television.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

 _The third_ : he is eight years old, though, if asked to confirm that, he would think quite angrily (though he would not tell you aloud) that he is nearly nine. He is in a car, sitting in the back seat as his father drives him and another man to the farmland outside of Central, to a small farm that’s owned under many different names but eventually can be traced back to Len’s father’s employers. They use it to hide things that would be difficult to hide in the city.

Sometimes those things are cargo: blocks and blocks of fine white powder packaged up, crates filled with guns of all sorts, even briefcases filled up with hundred dollar bills. 

Sometimes, those things are not cargo.

There is a body – or what will soon be a body – stuffed into the trunk of the car. 

“Did you have to be bring your kid?” the man in the front seat complaints, glancing back at Len.

“My neighbor’s asking stupid questions about how often I leave him alone,” Len’s father says dismissively. “Says it’s too soon after his grandfather died, says he might have trauma or something. I know it’s a pile of crap – Leo’s not squeamish, and if he was, I’d have something to say about that – but she’s been threatening to call CPS.”

“Your old buddies at the precinct would never do anything,” the man objects. He seems uneasy with Len’s presence; he glances backwards at him several times.

“No,” Len’s father says, not without satisfaction. “But with our _friend_ back there in the trunk, I didn’t want to take any chances.”

Len says nothing. He has not spoken for three weeks, not since he went home to his grandfather’s house after school – he likes his grandfather’s house, which is always cool and inviting, where his grandfather will always give him an ice cream from the ice-cream truck he parks out back when he’s not driving it around town, a fact which has won Len much respect and envy from his peers – and found his grandfather lying beneath the stairs and his father in the kitchen, washing his hands and muttering about old fools who wouldn’t agree to a perfectly reasonable request to use their truck to carry valuable goods, and bastards who threatened to call the feds on his own son.

Len has enough experience to identify the caliber of bullet that shattered the back of his grandfather’s head. It is a perfect match to the gun that even now is strapped to his father’s side.

The police had ruled it a suicide.

He does not speak as his father and his colleagues – both the one that had ridden in the car with them and the ones in the car that had followed them – go out to remove the body.

The man who had protested in the car shoos Len off, telling him to “go play or something”. 

Len goes.

He wanders aimlessly until he smells it.

Smoke.

Like one of his grandfather’s terrible cigars, what he would laugh and call his worst habit, the terrible stench of it. 

Len goes towards the smell.

There is a house alight with flame, roaring flames, tall as a man, licking at the sides of it. It is being destroyed, consumed entirely, and standing before the house, there is an angel.

 _An angel comes to you with a sword of flame_ , Len’s mother had told him. _Flame and smoke and ash. An angel is destruction._

Len has never seen anything so beautiful as the boy who stands solemnly before the flames, his eyes wide and vacant, his hands outstretched towards the flames as though he could embrace them, his legs anchored firmly into the ground. His face shines in the light of the flames.

His face is _ecstatic_ , a picture of sublime epiphany. He glories in the destruction that he has brought.

God’s messenger, indeed.

Len does not want to disturb the angel, would be content just to see him once, but he finds himself drawn forward despite himself, feet moving without his volition. 

He draws up beside the angel. The air around them shimmers with heat, as if there is something more there than just flame. And delicately – as carefully as Len can manage – he reaches out, hand trembling, to touch the angel’s shoulder, delicate as the few times he did it in temple, to touch the holiness and perhaps to win some for himself.

The angel turns to him, calm and still distant.

Len opens his mouth, but he has no words. His face contorts as he tries to find something, his lips moving uselessly, but it is no good. He bows his head in shame.

The angel reaches for him, cups his face and presses his thumb deep into wrinkle between Len’s eyes, what Len’s mother had told him long ago was the Mark of Cain, which all men bear as a reminder. 

“It’s okay,” the angel says. His voice is lower than it ought to be for the body he has chosen: larger than life, he appears to Len, but in truth no more than an eleven year old boy. 

_It was an angel that stopped Avraham from sacrificing Itzhak. A father sacrificing his own child, till an angel came to stop him._

Len finds his tongue loosened, the stress melting off of him for the first time in – he doesn’t know how long. Since his mother died, he thinks.

“What’s your name?” he asks the angel.

The angel looks at him, steady and solemn. “Michael,” he says.

Michael. Mi-cha-el.

_Who is like God?_

Michael, the great prince who stands up for the children of the people.

Michael, who saved a man from the furnace, who told a woman she would bear a son, who brought his sword down upon the armies that threatened.

Who saved a child from his father.

“You should go,” the angel says gently, and turns back to the flames.

Len goes, stumbling away, and his eyes shine with the light of one who has been blessed.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

These are the three things Len remembers from his childhood.

It occurs to him, as he kneels over the body of the man he has killed, the man he took a long sliver of metal straight to the heart of, a quick clean death with no pain, a man that Len is even now pulling into the proper configuration for a sacrifice – the inversion of the Akedah, death first and then binding, so that no angel can interfere – that he might have taken the wrong lesson from all of those events.

Oh, well.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Len cares for only two people in this world.

The first is his sister. She is a miracle that he had not expected, a late-born child, not his mother’s but certainly his father’s. Her mother stayed only the first two years of her life, but handed her to Len before she left, her eyes wild and pained.

“Take care of my angel, will you?” the woman had asked, Lisa’s mother.

Len had nodded, his eyes still full with the angel at the house. Lisa had been born just after that; he ought to have taken it as a sign. 

“I’ll take care of her,” he had promised, and he did, the best he could. His Lisa, Lise, _libi_ , his heart. It was fitting that she bear that sobriquet, the heart that was given to him.

He certainly did not have one of his own anymore.

Len’s father starts recruiting Len on jobs, and Len begins to earn a small amount, what’s left behind after Len’s father takes his share of Len’s share; he spends it exclusively on Lisa. 

The only thing he keeps for himself is his mother’s favorite hat-pin, but only because he knows that it can be dangerous – long and sharp as a knife. It’s old in style, long since outdated, the sort of thing the old church matrons wore on the week-ends. Len thinks one of them may have given it to her when she helped cook their Sunday meals in return for help on Saturday. 

It is long, and it is sharp, and when Len finds one of his father’s grunts putting his hands on Lisa the wrong way, hands where they oughtn’t be on such a little baby, he slides it up between the man’s ribs into his heart and pulls it out in the same motion, simple and easy. It is mostly luck that lets him catch the heart instead of another organ, but the result is a quick and straightforward death.

The man may not even know he is dying as he falls. 

Len first reaches out to the crib, scooping her up and comforting her with a few strands of her favorite lullaby. She quiets easily, and he lays her back down.

He turns and regards the body, then frowns.

Something is wrong.

Len goes to his room and fetches an old jump-rope that he won in a lottery at his school. It had been free to play, and Len has always suspected that they rigged it so that the poorer kids were more likely to win. 

He wraps it around the man’s arms and legs, till he looks all trussed up like a chicken. Like a picture Len had seen of the Bible. Like a prisoner. Like a sacrifice.

No angel came to save Lisa, Len reasons, and so it was his job to do it.

If the angel hadn’t wanted him to do it, he would have stopped him, just like the angel stopped Avraham Aveniu when it was his son on the slab. 

Lisa starts crying again.

Len frowns. There’s too much light in the room, and no shades; he had even nerved himself up to tell his father about it, but nothing had changed. He takes a bottle, takes Lisa, and goes to sit in the closet. She likes that much better.

His father finds them in there and asks if they were there to hide from the man who broke into the house and tied up and killed Mr. Johansson. A revenge killing, no doubt, his father says; he already has an idea of who it was – or rather, who he intended to blame.

Len says yes, because that is what his father expects, and at his father’s instruction puts Lisa aside to learn how to best arrange the evidence to cast blame on the man you want to be blamed.

It is perhaps the only useful thing his father teaches him. 

The other lessons – painful lessons, angry lessons – do nothing but make Len cold inside. 

Lisa is the first person Len cares for.

The second person Len cares for is his angel.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Len thinks in numbers. Three and two and one – a countdown on a timer, the time when he would get caught and the game be up, the race over and lost.

It was three tries he made to tell his father that there was a problem in the plan. It was two minutes that the police took to respond to the alarm. It was one father, testifying against Len to cast the blame for the break-in as some childish infraction instead of the robbery it was, that sent him to juvie.

At juvie, the same pattern repeated. It took three hours for Len to find the person to whom he said the wrong thing and angered them. It took only two words to do so. It was one guard that laughed, and said the other boy’s anger was nothing, and looked the other way.

It took three boys to hold Len down. It took two more to kick at his ribs and thighs until he stopped struggling. 

It was only one shiv, held up to the light to show off to the other boys, that would have been enough to end Len’s life there and then. 

A sacrifice of his father to keep himself out of prison, held down and struggling – bound by hands instead of rope, but a sacrifice none the less, about to face the knife. 

And then an angel intervenes.

_Michael._

Len will never forget his face.

He comes rushing towards them, his mighty hands outstretched, and they scatter before him. He head-butts one so savagely they fall backwards, clutching their chest; he slams his fist into another; a third he merely turns to glare at and the other boy trips and falls and scrambles back, fleeing.

Len coughs up blood and doesn’t care, looking up at him.

“You saved me,” he marvels. He never thought he’d get his own Biblical miracle, not him.

Perhaps killing the man who tried to hurt Lisa was not as bad as he’d thought.

“Fuck,” the angel says. “You’re bleeding.”

He scoops Len up and takes him to the infirmary.

“You’re the one with the fire,” Len says dreamily. The angel is so beautiful. 

“Yeah,” the angel says shortly. “How’d you even hear about that so quick?”

“I didn’t,” Len says. “I _know_.”

The angel puts him in the infirmary and backs away, his eyes fixed on Len as if Len’s done something interesting, something _right_. Len is so happy he could cry.

He does cry, but that’s mostly when the nurse cracks his dislocated fingers back into place and wraps his cracked ribs, and only then gives him something for the pain.

When he escapes, he asks for the kid with the fire and finds a name.

Mick Rory.

 _Michael_ Rory.

Len goes to him the next day, shy as anything, feeling that old terror of non-speech stick in his throat, and presents him with a lighter he’d stolen.

“Trying to butter me up?” the angel asks. 

“For you,” Len says, and cannot say more, his clever tongue failing him. His hands spasm, gripping tight and then relaxing before tightening again.

“You’re panicking,” the angel observes, frowning. “You scared of me?”

“N- _no_ ,” Len forces out through numb lips. “I _love_ you.”

The angel is taken aback. “For saving your life?” he asks.

“For giving me _purpose_ ,” Len says. “I – I can go now. If you want.”

“No,” the angel says, seeming surprised by his own words. He had intended to send Len away, Len can tell, but Len offering to do so pre-emptively seems to have stumped him. “I guess you can stay.”

Len nods and slides into the seat.

“What’d you trade for that lighter?”

“Didn’t trade,” Len says. “Don’t know the prices yet. Stole it from the guard with the red hair.”

“You stole it from _Mason_? Jeez. You’ve got quick hands. He likes to put on airs and say no one’s ever lifted from him – and people have tried.”

Len shrugs, but is secretly pleased at the angel’s approval.

“Thanks,” the angel adds.

“No problem,” Len says. 

“My name’s Mick Rory.”

“Leonard Snart.”

“Leonard?”

“Len is fine.”

“Len,” the angel says, testing out the name. “Len Snart. Huh. And what does Len Snart have to say for himself?”

“You shouldn’t let the guards be mean to you,” Len says, having observed one shoving Mick earlier. 

Mick snorts. “I shouldn’t, huh? What should I do?”

“Get around them,” Len says promptly. He licks his lips. “I can help you think of a way, if you’d like.”

“Sure, boss,” Mick says, sounding amused. “Whatever you say.”

It took one fight for them to meet. It was the second time they’d met.

It took only three minutes for them to become friends.

Yes, Len likes numbers.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Len gets to be very good at planning.

His father is not, so someone has to be, and when he is on his own at last – his father safely behind bars in another state, Lisa living with the nice foster-mom down the street “until your father returns” and attending school, with Len coming to visit every few days – he gets even better.

He has to be better. 

He has an angel to protect.

Mick has always laughed at Len’s explanations that he’s an angel, saying that Len’s the only one in the world to think such a thing, but Len persists. He _knows_. Sure, Mick is violent and crass and impulsive and rude, but he’s also loyal and devoted and capable of wonderful things. He’s a proper angel, one of Len’s religion, not some metaphorical reference to goodness, as if goodness could be summed up as something so simple as do-no-wrong.

Sometimes goodness needs a little bit of _teeth_ to it.

Len takes to learning about blueprints and security systems and plans. He learns all about fingerprints and chemical analysis and crime scene investigation techniques, too, because leaving behind a clue at a theft would result in capture – as he learned one time to his dismay. Luckily, they didn’t have much on him or Mick that time, and they are not in prison long.

They are in prison fairly often, those first few years, when they’re living mostly off of robbed ATMs and held-up stores, before Len finally wraps his head around the idea of being something bigger and better than his father ever was. 

A higher class of thief. 

Len also kills several people during that time. 

Some are killed by necessity – a man in prison, leaping at Mick from the back, shiv in hand; Len broke his neck. A security guard on a job, though Len learned to regret that; the heat is far worse than ever before, and it is only luck that they drop the inquiry against Len and Mick in favor of other targets. A man on one of Len’s crews who tries to back out mid-way, to sell them out in exchange for favors and a deal with the police; Len finds out and has to shoot him before he himself is shot.

Mick kills some people, too. People trying to hurt Len. People who get in Len’s way. 

People who are in buildings he wants to burn. 

Mick likes fire a _lot_.

Len likes things that make Mick happy.

Oddly enough, making _Len_ happy seems to make Mick happy. It’s an intriguing puzzle.

Len also starts developing strange feelings around this period.

At first, it might be mistaken for being understandable. Being around Mick makes his face flush, makes his hands shake, his ears heat up. His stomach is unsettled, clenched with nervousness and joy both. He cannot take his eyes off of him. He blushes when Mick removes a piece of clothing, or works out into a sweaty happy mess. 

It is, when he inquires shyly with the shrink Mick had insisted on obtaining a regular appointment with, claiming that she did wonders, the symptoms of a crush.

Len’s not so sure. 

He’s pretty sure that a crush is when you want sex. Kisses. Romance. 

When Mick makes Len feel like that, Len doesn’t want to have _sex_ with him.

He mostly just wants to murder somebody.

Not in the I’m-so-awkward-I-would-kill-somebody-to-get-out-of-this sort of way.

_Literally._

When Mick prances around their safe-house half naked one day, Len doesn’t see images of him naked, of things they can do together. He gets flashes of the prison guard who insulted Mick months ago in prison, a casual insult about Mick’s intelligence that had made its way under Mick’s skin, sees the guard all trussed up like a bird and bleeding from a gash to the neck, the perfect sacrifice for an angel. 

His cock twitches. 

He has to excuse himself. 

The first time Mick stops teasing him and just reels him in for a kiss, with a quiet “This okay?” afterwards, which Len answered by kissing him back for hours, Len waited until Mick had gone to sleep, pink in the cheeks and happy, and then he goes and he finds that guard, lays down tacks in the road to bust his wheel and make him pull over, and when he flags Len down for help, Len slits his throat and ties him up and then he dumps his body in the river, and then he goes back to Mick and he slips into his bed and wakes him up at dawn with a kiss.

“How are you even _real_?” Mick marvels, as if Len’s done something great.

Len smiles and takes Mick’s hand, drawing it down to his hard cock. 

Mick is all too pleased to comply.

Len doesn’t _need_ it to get off, he wants to be clear about that. It’s all well and good, but all he needs is Mick, happy and pleased, and that’s enough for him – he doesn’t need to be interested in the act, or even to desire the act independently, to enjoy seeing Mick happy. But he can’t say it doesn’t add a certain extra oomph to the proceedings. 

So he keeps it up. People who insult Mick are a particular favorite target, but he doesn’t have anything specific in mind when he goes hunting for his pool of victims. Any one of them will do, as long as they’re killed the _right_ way: minimum of fuss, _don’t make him hurt too much, son_ , and then tied up, trussed up like a chicken.

Like a sacrifice. 

Of course, eventually people start finding the bodies.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“Do you think we’re being morbid?” Mick asks through a mouthful of popcorn. 

“What do you mean?” Len asks, setting up the TV and clicking play on the remote.

“Watching this.”

“You love Silence of the Lambs,” Len replies, puzzled.

“Yeah,” Mick says. “But, like, the newspapers are all saying there’s a _real_ serial killer on the loose. Bondage-man.”

Len snorts. “Bondage-man?”

“Okay, that’s not what they call him,” Mick admits, grinning. “But they should be. Isn’t his thing that everyone is tied up?”

“I suppose,” Len says. “What _are_ they calling him?”

“The Central City Constrictor.”

“Like a boa constrictor?”

“Yep. Guess he strangles his victims – no one’s been able to identify a method of killing yet, nothing but the fact that he ties them up _after_ they're dead. Well, nothing that they’ve made public, anyway.”

Len shrugs. There isn't, actually - sometimes he shoots them, sometimes he stabs them, sometimes he breaks their neck. What matters is that it's quick and without pain.

_You wouldn't want to hurt him too bad, now would you?_

And the binding, afterwards. That's important, too. Akedah reversed; the chosen one is bound and set up for sacrifice, then saved by the angel - Len's victims are bad men, bad women, all of them, and they are not chosen, or they would've been saved, too. First there is the angel, then they are sacrificed, and only then are they bound.

The only thing Len's victims have in common is that first, they must have met Mick. 

Mick is such a catalyst in Len's life, he cannot imagine him being any less so to everyone else.

"Do you think they'll catch him?" Mick asks.

"What?" Len asks, awakening from his distracted reverie. "You've seen this movie before; you know how it ends."

"Not _Buffalo Bill_ ," Mick says, rolling his eyes. "The Constrictor!"

"I don't see why they would."

"Serial killers always get caught," Mick says confidently. "They do the same thing, over and over again, and that's what gives the cops their leads."

"Jack the Ripper wasn't caught."

"Jack the Ripper was a media sensation, not a serial killer," Mick scoffs. "That, or he was _dead_. Otherwise he never would've stopped. Serial killers can't."

Len considers this seriously, the way he considers all of Mick's insights. It is the trait that Mick has admitted he likes best out of all of Len's, his willingness to take Mick seriously no matter what.

Mick has a good point. 

Len doesn't _need_ to kill, he doesn't, really, but - well. It does not go particularly well for him if he goes too long without. His hands start to shake a little, he starts to dream about it - hot stuffy dreams that make him come in his sleep like a teenager, but unpleasant despite that - and he gets...twitchy. Like an addict without his fix.

Of course, 'too long' without is a relative term. Even in prison, there's always someone to kill. It’s just not as _satisfying_ if he doesn’t do it properly.

Mick has a good point.

He always does.

If Len continues the way he has been, he may be caught, and if he is caught he will be killed or imprisoned for life, and that wouldn't be any good to anyone, now would it?

"Guess we'll see," Len says aloud. 

"Shh," Mick says, already absorbed in the movie. "Good part's starting."

Len is a very good planner.

He will think of something.

He does.

It is not difficult to find killers in Central City. Between the Families, the rampant crime in the slums, and the high-end businessmen with just a little too much tooth in their smiles, they're everywhere. Nobody is going to clean up Central City, not unless they have an army. Or superpowers. Or both.

Len doesn't want them to.

His next victim takes a little more prep work than usual. A woman - dark haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned and sneering; she'd called Mick a rat when he'd declined to sleep with her. Len slides his mother's hat-pin up through the ribs and into the heart, and he binds her, and takes a glorious few seconds to be satisfied with what he's done.

And then he goes to work.

He unbinds her, well before the post-mortem ligature marks can settle into place, and he takes a knife - a big butcher knife, ugly and awkward to carry - and he slits her open.

It's _disgusting_. 

But necessary. 

He leaves evidence. Not much - a fingerprint here, a scraping of clothing there, a single hair.

A month later, he does it again. The woman is black-haired. Green-eyed. Pale-skinned.

Two weeks after that, again.

He becomes concerned that he will run out of appropriate victims. Mick likes strip clubs, though, so it's not that hard, really, but _still_. He would have expected that the police would have caught on by now.

He does it again, ten days after the last one.

Two days later, the CCPD finally - _finally!_ \- announce that they've caught Operation Ollie, as the press had dubbed him for his well-known tendency to leave the body's insides cut open like (as one particularly morbid reporter had noted) he'd been playing the game 'Operation' with them.

Operation Ollie turned out to be Joseph Tusca, a prominent member of the business community, known for having ties with the Families and the politicians. Also known for the fact that his mother - dark-haired, green-eyed, pale-skinned, just like all his favorite whores - was killed by her rich husband when he took a butcher knife to her. 

Joseph Tusca beats his women and humiliates them; just for fun, he ruins their lives and those of their families. He cavalierly admits to that, but swears he never started _killing_ them. 

The police don't believe him. Neither do the press, the public, or, perhaps most importantly, the politicians and the Families. 

After all, it's hard to argue with the evidence Len left behind.

Amusingly enough, the police even manage to find a few suspicious deaths years before Len ever got involved - women beaten to death or stabbed or abandoned for exposure. The shrinks come on the television and explain that Tusca was just practicing, that he hadn't refined his technique yet, that this was early red flags that no one had noticed. There was even a working group established to think of ways to make the lives of prostitutes safer, so that disappearances and deaths like this could be identified and the perpetrator stopped before they expanded their victim pool to the general population.

Len is pleased by his success.

As are the police. Stories of the Central City Constrictor, never captured, fade away in the pure light of public acclaim for their hard-working police-work in capturing Operation Ollie. 

It's not hard. After a spree like that, Len is satisfied for a good long time. Mick is also pleased by the increase in Len's affections, albeit slightly confused by the source. 

Everybody's happy.

And the next time Len starts to get twitchy fingers, he starts looking around for other men - bad men, bad women at times - to see who had the appropriate backstory or bad habits that Len could take advantage of. 

Mick thinks Len's interest in spotting serial killers is adorable, and marvels at his success in IDing them before they break and go on to start killing. 

The Central City media just loves their run of serial killers, giving them names and attention. Hell, some of Len's more extravagant victims _confess_ to the crimes he makes for them, wanting the fame and notoriety. Iron Heights is a revolving door for criminals in Central, and the death row process is uncertain and can take decades. Better to have your name live forever.

Splatter Steve, known for doodling in the blood-splatter he left behind. Hammerhead Harry, who took a hammer to his victims' heads after they were dead. Charlie Cook-pot, who took pieces of his victims and boiled them for eating. Footless Joe Jackson, who took his victims' feet as a prize. 

The Central City Slums Strangler.

That one pissed Len right off, because it isn't even _him_. He _never_ rapes women, never raped anybody, and he didn't much like people who did.

It takes all he's got not to track down the bastard and drag him into the CCPD himself.

He _does_ track him down, though. And, well - if the CCPD won't catch him, then Len's going to take justice into his own hands.

He’s got a murderer to set up.

Anger is not conductive to murder.

That’s probably why Mick finds him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“If the next words out of your mouth are ‘This isn’t what it looks like’, I’m gonna yell,” Mick says.

Len looks down at the body. “It isn’t, really,” he says.

Mick crosses his arms.

“It ain’t,” Len protests. “He’s dead, yes, no lie there, but it’s not like you don’t know I kill people.”

“And when did you start _strangling_ them?”

“…today.”

“Today. Uh-huh.”

“I was literally fucking you during the previous event,” Len points out, crossing his arms. “I’m not the Strangler, Mick.”

“Of course you’re not the Strangler,” Mick says dismissively. “You don’t rape people. Hell, you only really _like_ having sex when the planets are in goddamn alignment or something.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“Boss. You’re standing over a strangled corpse. Wearing gloves and holding a…first aid kit?”

“Evidence,” Len admits. “Linking the murder to Tommy Reins.”

“Tommy Re– you know, that rat bastard _would_ do it.”

“More than would; he _has_ been,” Len says, making a face. “I’ve been tracking people I knew had a predilection, talking with the girls and all, and the people with the right sort of work experience for the job, and I figured it was him. Then I followed him around a bit, walked right by him throwing around some garbage. Figured it was over one of the bodies.”

“And you didn’t shoot him then?”

“Couldn’t get close enough to check for the body then. Only got confirmation when the police sectioned off the area the next day.”

“And your solution is…?”

“I’m setting him up,” Len says. “Obviously.”

“Obviously,” Mick says.

“You don’t sound convinced.”

“It ain’t exactly the first time I’ve seen you killing a man,” Mick says. “Burned down at least three houses to cover it up.”

Len blinks and thinks back. There _had_ been a few very well-timed arson attacks…

“Thanks?” he hazards.

“Boss. Snart. _Lenny_.”

“…Mick?”

“ _Why do you keep killing people?_ ”

Len opens his mouth, then closes his mouth. Then he frowns. “Is it a problem?”

Mick stares at him.

“What?”

Mick is silent for a long moment. “You like setting these guys up?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“You’ve done it before.”

Len ducks his head a little. “Some of my guesses were maybe a little more pre-determined than they ought’ve been.”

“You _bet_ me on some of those, you cheat!”

Len lifts his head, smiling. Mick sounds fond, if somewhat bemused; Len had always known his angel would understand. It’s all for him, after all.

“Nothing you weren’t happy to lose,” he replies cheerfully.

Mick takes a step forward.

“No, no!” Len says immediately. “Don’t; you’ll contaminate my crime scene, and then I’ll have to pick another.”

“Another…?”

Len nods at the girl.

“And it was such a pain, too,” he says, shaking his head. “To mimic the rape, I had to make sure to catch her just as she was coming back from someone's apartment. Luckily, she was very conscientious for her safety; sexually, that is. After all, I wouldn’t want the wrong man getting caught, would I?” He laughs. 

Mick is silent for another long moment.

“Mick, why don’t you go home?” Len suggests. “I’ll finish up here, and we can have a nice night in.” He smiles at Mick. “Have some fun to ourselves.”

“How long you’ve been framing people like this, Lenny?” Mick suddenly says. 

“This? Uh. Couple of years, I guess,” Len says, blinking at the unexpected question. 

“Couple of years,” Mick says, like he’s thinking something out. “That’s the setting up, you mean, not the killing. The killing’s been going on longer. I _know_ it’s been going on longer.”

“Well, yes. But you had a very good point – this was a conversation we had a long time ago, I doubt you remember it – but you pointed out that doing the same thing over and over again would just make sure someone got caught. And, of course, I didn’t want that someone to be me.”

“Of course,” Mick echoes. He’s strangely pale.

“So now I mostly do mimicries,” Len says. “Not _always_ – a man’s gotta treat himself once in a while, you know? – but most of the time. Family men, rich bastards who think they get away with anything, that sort of thing. They’re pretty easy to set up.”

Mick nods slowly. “Lenny,” he says, hesitating in a way that’s not entirely like him. “Lenny, your – you know. When you get _into_ it. With me. Not just having fun ‘cause I’m having fun – which is fine, I don’t mind that –”

“I’m sorry I can’t do more than that the rest of the time,” Len says, and he means it, too. 

“It’s okay, really. You enjoy it – how’d you put it – like a good backrub or wrestle match.”

“I do,” Len confirms.

“That’s good enough for me, really it is. But those times, you know, when the planets align and you come home and you’re _wanting_ it – I always thought…well. That it was someone else.”

“There’s nobody else for me but you, Mick,” Len says, injured.

“It ain’t anybody else, is it, Lenny,” Mick says, and it’s not a question. “It’s _this_.”

Len shrugs. Mick’s not wrong. “Go home, Mick,” he says. “I’ll be home soon.”

Mick swallows. “I love you, Lenny,” he says. His voice is wavering for some reason. Maybe it’s because he said the words. They almost never do.

“I love you too, Mick,” Len says, a little confused by Mick’s sudden emotionality, but willing to go with it. “You’re – you’re _everything_.” He smiles a little. “My angel.”

Mick nods, swallowing. “Okay,” he says, and then he straightens his shoulders, like he’s coming to a conclusion. “Okay. Yes.” And then he smiles. It’s a bit shaky, but it’s a smile. “I’ll see you at home, Lenny. Finish up quick.”

“Will do,” Len says, and watches Mick march off, head held high.

He’s not entirely sure what happened, but he’s pleased by the results. He finishes the rest of the set-up humming a cheerful tune.

And then he goes home, and Mick is waiting.

A little drunk, but he’s there, and he’s waiting, and he loves Len just as much as Len loves Mick.

Len’s angel of destruction.

Len had never doubted him for a minute.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“Tell me about ‘em,” Mick whispers into Len’s ear, all around him, Len sitting between his splayed legs, feeling him hard against him, feeling Mick’s broad arms wrapped around him. His hand wrapped around Len’s cock. “Tell me about what you do with ‘em.”

“God,” Len groans. He’s shaking. His toes are _curling_. It wasn’t like this before. “ _Mick_.”

“Now, now,” Mick says, slowing his hand. “I want to hear you tell me.”

“Mick, please! I need –”

“Now,” Mick says, and his voice brooks no argument.

“I find ‘em,” Len pants, and Mick starts moving again, rewarding him. “I find ‘em, oh _God_ , I find ‘em. They’re – they’re people. People who’ve met you.”

“Met me?” 

“My angel,” Len whimpers, tilting his hips up. He can see them, so many of them; the eidetic memory he cursed as a child running before his eyes. He can see them, and he can see what he could make of them – all of them, dead and bound before him –

“And how do you pick ‘em beyond that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Len says. “Whatever killer I’m framing, I go with that. I pick a style I think he’d use – or she, once it was a she – and then I use that style to pick them. But it’s not important. What’s important is that they met an angel. My angel.”

“Tell me more,” Mick purrs into his ear. “Tell me what you _do_ to them.”

“I kill them,” Len whispers, and god, it feels so good, so free, so – god, he’s never felt this good, not without a knife or a gun in one hand and rope in the other – it’s so _good_ , it’s Mick, it’s _wonderful_ – he can _see them_ , dead and bound, just perfect – “No pain. There can’t be pain.”

“Why not?”

“Don’t want him to hurt,” Len recites. “They shouldn’t be hurt. Should be nice and quick and easy.”

“So you kill them. Nice. Neat.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not enough for you, is it?”

“No, it’s – it’s – oh God, yes, just like that –”

“You don’t just kill them. It wouldn’t be _enough_ , if they were just killed, would it? It wouldn’t be _right_?”

“No! No, oh, oh – no, they need to be – they – oh, yes – they need to be bound up.”

Mick presses his lips against Len’s neck, a silent reward.

“Bind them, like a sacrifice,” Len babbles. “An angel and a death and a binding, it’s it in reverse, you see. It’s a rescue.”

“A rescue?”

“It’s _my_ rescue,” Len confesses. “You saved me. Me, and me alone; it was _me_ you chose. I’m worthy. Not them. Never them. So they have to die, and every time they die, I live it again, the feeling – it’s never quite the same, but it’s close – the rush – the _glory_ –”

“Ecstasy,” Mick says.

“Yes – _yes_ – Mick, _please_ –”

“Okay,” Mick says, and moves his hand faster still, finally giving it to Len just the way he wants it. “Come for me.”

Len does.

“Fuck,” he groans a few minutes later. “That was – that was _good_.”

“Still don’t get why the rest of us are so into it?” Mick asks, amused.

“Not really,” Len confesses. “But it was nice. _Much_ better than a backrub. Especially with the way you talked.” He shivers a little. “Never gets old. Fuck, I love it when you do that. Nearly as good as the real thing.”

“But not as good,” Mick says, shaking his head.

“Well, no,” Len says. “But still good! Where’d you even come up with it, anyway?”

“Heard a radio show,” Mick replies, shrugging. “Says relationships are built around compromise. Each person brings something to it, and how you have to accept your partner if you have a chance of stick around long-term.”

“Well, I’m as long-term as it gets,” Len says, lolling his head back. “I’d climb out of my own grave to come back to you, Mick.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Mick says.

“I would,” Len insists.

“And me to you,” Mick says indulgently. “Don’t worry about it. If I haven’t left you yet, I won’t leave you now.”

“Of course you’re not going to leave me,” Len says. His faith is as strong as diamond, and cannot be broken. “I’d never let you.”

“I’m sure you wouldn’t,” Mick says wryly. “I can only imagine how you’d react if I ever tried. Lucky for you, I’m just crazy enough to be okay with that.”

Len hums happily and turns around to take his turn at worshiping his angel.

Everything is good.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Everything is awful.

Is it his fault? Is it because he didn’t watch well enough, didn’t protect him, didn’t pay enough attention?

Is it because Len loved him too much? 

_You shall worship no other god but me, for I am a jealous God._

No. Nononono.

Hasn't Len been good? Len's only killed people the way he ought to, the way he knows is right, the way that feels _good_. Hasn't he been putting bad people away, putting his need to cover his tracks to good use?

"You don't get to have him," Len whispers, rocking back and forth. "No. _Please_. I _need_ him."

God is trying to call Mick home, but Len doesn't want to let him go.

Len _can't_ let him go. 

The fire - that building in Shreveport. It went up too fast. God's retribution, or that of a more traditional type?

Someone could have set them up.

Len will find them. Len will find all of them. Everybody.

And he's gonna kill them in Mick's name.

Yes.

That's what he'll do.

If Mick is gone –

Len will kill them _all_. 

And then, if the police are too incompetent to do the job for him, he'll take himself, too.

"Sir! _Sir!_ "

Len looks up. The nurse in front of him has kind eyes. They will look better wide open and dull, as Len wraps her throat in rope –

"Sir," she says. "You're Mr. Rory's contact, right?"

"Yes," Len says, taking the urge and crushing it beneath his heel. She's bringing him news of Mick. She might be one of the ones caring for Mick. She can stay. 

She can live.

"How -" He pauses, fearful of the answer. What if she tells him Mick is gone? How will he react, finding out that his angel is gone? The best thing in Len's life, the one that saved him so many times, that send him Lisa, that got him through everything? That saw the sacrifices and understood?

Len prays for the first time in years.

_I will give you all the sacrifices you could possibly want. Bound sacrifices, burnt sacrifices, everything. Just don't take him away from me._

"Mr. Rory's injuries from the fire are very severe," she says. "But we think - at the moment - that he's going to pull through."

Len exhales all at once, in very near a sob. 

Yes.

Oh, God. God our Lord, King of the World, who we worship and revere. 

Thank you. 

Len looks up at the nurse, memorizing her face. "Tell me everything." 

Mick does not wake for another hellish six days. Medical coma, the doctors say; intentionally induced so that he can heal the burns and what skin grafts were medically necessary, though they warn that he might need cosmetic ones as well to hide the burns.

Len doesn’t care about that. Len just wants Mick to wake up.

Six days of waiting, of wondering; life, yes, but is Mick sound of mind where he is not sound of body?

The nurse is kind. She lets him stay late every other night, skirting the legality of restrictions, looking apologetic every other night when she sends him home so that he can get some proper rest and a change of clothing.

Every other night, he kills someone. Sometimes more than one someone. 

The newspapers are filled with the reemergence of the Constrictor, back and far worse than before.

The shrinks come on the television and say that something has caused a re-emergence, a spiral. Everyone is in danger. No one was ever able to determine what it was that made the Constrictor kill, no one knows what his target type is, no one knows how to stop him, and the police have nothing. Comparisons are made to Hannibal Lector, except, of course, the bodies are undisturbed. Nice, neat deaths, with post-mortem binding – no signs of sexual trauma, no signs of abuse. 

Just death.

Central City is in a terror.

On the fifth day, Lisa comes to him, sits by him, wraps her hand in his and squeezes it. 

On the sixth day, Mick awakens. He smiles at Len, somewhat confused, but he speaks, he answers questions, he doesn’t know who the president is but he can name the head of each Family in Central. The doctors accept that as sufficient and predict Mick’s full recovery, in time.

Len kills two more people that evening in thanks, binds them up tight, and even remembers to pick up pizza for Lisa on the way home.

On the seventh day, Len rests. 

“I’ll take care of everything, Lenny,” Lisa promises. “You look like you’ve barely slept all week.”

Len smiles.

Mick gets out of the hospital quickly enough, but there’s plenty more still to do. Physical therapy, medication, changing bandages – it’s enough to keep Len quite busy.

It takes about a month before Mick finally manages to wheedle the TV remote out of Lisa when Len is out arguing with the doctors about the appropriate level of pain medication for Mick.

When Len returns, triumphantly clutching a renewed pill bottle, Mick is lying in bed and staring the ceiling.

“Hey, Mick,” Len says, plopping down. “Lisa’s gone to get groceries – all that gross vegetable stuff that you’re always insisting on, plus plenty of chips just for fun – and _I_ just came back from –”

“ _Once a week_ , Lenny?”

Len frowns, derailed. What’s once a week? “Your…television show?” he guesses.

Mick picks up the TV remote and presses the on button with what is really an unnecessary amount of force.

A news channel is on. They’re replaying an interview with some famous shrink or another, saying that spiraling isn’t uncommon for serial killers, that it’s only going to escalate, etc. 

“I’ve seen this one before,” Len offers, though he’s got a pretty good idea about what’s gotten Mick steamed.

“Yeah,” Mick says, giving him a _look_. “They were just saying about how the Constrictor’s been striking once a week, recently, like _clockwork_. Say, around the time I'm in my physio class.”

“I’m very happy you’re doing better,” Len says.

“Don’t derail the conversation.”

“I’m not.”

“Of course you –” Mick falls silent. “You’re not. You’re doing this – you think your killing is related to me getting _better_?”

“I was very upset when you got hurt,” Len replies tranquilly. “The fire was too sudden. I thought maybe someone had caused it.”

“Is that why all your vics are Family men and other such assholes?”

Len inclines his head.

“What would you have done if I’d actually died?”

Len arches his eyebrows. “I don’t know,” he drawls. “Let’s not find out.”

Mick grunts, satisfied.

“Well, you can stop now,” he says. “Not so often, anyway. I’m getting better quick enough, and it’s not because of your superstition.”

Len shakes his head in amusement.

“Boss. Promise me.”

Len sighs. Oh, his angel. “Fine,” he says, gesturing for Mick to shove himself over so that Len can crawl into the bed next to him, careful not to put any pressure on any of the burns. “I’ll take a break. But you gotta do your part and get better.”

“For the sake of Central City, I will,” Mick says, rolling his eyes. “Look at me, I’m a hero, and I didn’t even have to get out of bed.”

Len smirks. 

He doesn’t tell Mick that he would have burned the city down in his honor. Len’s a planner, not spontaneous; he wouldn’t have done that. He wouldn’t have had the emotional stability to plan something like that, all the wheels and cogs and pieces to place. 

So, no, Len doesn’t know exactly what he would have done.

But just in case, this time around, he’s already prepped the plans, and all that would be needed is the execution.

If Mick dies before Len, then Central City will be Len’s burnt offering in his honor.

The media goes absolutely wild with speculation when a week passes without a Constrictor body, then another, then another. People compare it to Jack the Ripper.

(Mick finds the t-shirts and other tourist attractions disturbing as hell for some reason.)

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“You have _got_ to let me go with you this time,” Mick says. “I’m better. I’m healthy. Even the docs say the range of motion I’ve gotten back is on the extreme high end of the scale. The term ‘miraculous’ has been used.”

Len makes a face. “I don’t know…” he drawls, drawing it out. 

“It’s a _superhero_ ,” Mick says. “Boss. You can’t bench me for this one. Bad enough you benched me for the Kahndaq Diamond bust, that was _epic_. But you are _not_ benching me for this one.”

“You hadn’t to finish your recommended PT by the time I went off after the Kahndaq.”

“Only if you read the recommendation to the highest possible amount,” Mick grumbles. “Anyway, I’m done with it _now_. C’mon, boss. _Superhero_.”

“Well,” Len says, “I did get you a little something while I was going after the diamond.”

He puts the box on the table.

Mick pops it open. “Holy crap,” he says. “Is this what I think it is?”

“That depends,” Len says. “If you’re thinking it’s block of cheddar cheese, the answer is no, that's in the bag with the groceries. If, however, you’re thinking that it’s the heat gun that matches my cold gun, then yes, it is what you think it is.”

"I'm going to ignore that because you got me a present with firepower _and_ an appropriate supervillain theme," Mick says, eyes shining. "Let's go try this baby out."

Len enjoys watching Mick have fun. He _loves_ watching Mick be happy. 

"So we gonna kill him?" Mick asks as they head into Central.

"It's really up to him," Len admits. "I'd rather not - a glorious defeat to him now would make for a hell of a better story, you know? Sets up a nice dynamic. But if he can't beat us when we're fighting at half-flag, it'd just be boring to go up against him anyway."

"Makes sense," Mick agrees. He slides his eyes towards Len. "No going out for 'pizza' while we're working."

The emphasis he puts on the word pizza makes clear that he's not talking about pizza.

"You're never going to let me live down doing that," Len sighs.

"You convinced Lisa that you take an _hour_ to go get pizza! I had to tell her you'd developed a thing for being finicky about your pizza, and you're _never_ finicky about food."

Len shrugs helplessly. Lisa had assumed he'd taken a detour to let some tension off, which wasn't necessarily wrong, but she assumed it was a somewhat more innocuous tension. "I'm the one who had to endure the 'they'll arrest you if they find you fighting in bars' and the 'you'd better not be cheating on Mick you asshole' speeches," he protests. "I've suffered enough."

Mick just smirks. "Still. I wanna hear you say it."

"I promise, no 'pizza' while we're supervillaining."

"Good."

The big blow-out is - everything Len could have possibly wished for. Media attention, dumbfounded cops, a superhero reveal, even explosions towards the end - it was just the right level of drama.

He's even pleased to be defeated. A weak superhero is worse than none at all. Measure a man by his enemies, after all.

Lisa breaks them out, laughing at their antics.

Mick is thoughtful, and later that evening, when they're curled up together - Len has always enjoyed resting against Mick - he speaks. "Your 'pizza' thing' is gonna be easier, now."

"How so?" Len says, mind awhirl with plans as always, taking its painfully slow time to calm down enough to let him sleep.

"Well, you're not just Len Snart, thief, anymore. You're Captain Cold. You've got a gimmick. You make puns. _Terrible_ puns."

"So? I like puns."

"If someone fingers you for a set of murders that isn't ice-related, no one's gonna buy it."

Len frowns a little. It's true, but - "I've also made it easier for someone to set _me_ up," he points out. "Ice theme's not that common."

Mick nods, his breath warm on Len's neck. "True. But I think you'll find not everybody thinks first about framing. And with your fondness for 'pizza', it's more likely to be the other way around. Your – uh – favorite _style_ of pizza, it doesn’t involve ice, so if someone does end up catching you, they won’t think it’s you."

Len nods a little in return.

"I'm glad," Mick murmurs. "Don't wanna lose you."

"You won't," Len promises. “Not to prison, not to anything.”

They wait a month to let the heat die down, then Len makes a plan to get their guns back - with the lovely addition of a new gun for Lisa, who wants in on the fun, and a visual guide as to how the guns are made, courtesy of one Cisco Ramon. Len also has a few ideas about finding out the Flash's name from Cisco, too. And once Len has the Flash's identity, he'll be able to broker a deal that will keep him and Mick relatively safe and set up more superhero-supervillain match-ups.

It's a good plan.

It's absolutely nobody's fault that Len goes and jumps the gun prematurely. By _accident_.

See, Mick's been drilling it into Len's head that he needs to take more precautions with his 'pizza', and the current serial killer Len's mimicking is an organ remover (uuuuuuugh, so _unnecessary_ ), which takes a bit of planning and more than a bit of privacy. So when Len’s wandering through the streets and sees the pretty brunet CSI who'd been looking at them so avidly when they got walked through the CCPD after the fight with the Flash, looking at _Mick_ so avidly, Len just thinks it’s a perfect accident of fate – but contrary to his normal style, he doesn't kill him immediately.

Instead, Len slips up close, hits him on the back of the head to daze him, and then sticks him in the arm with a sedative strong enough to drop a mule.

The kid's out like a light almost immediately, only managing to get out half of a "Wha-?" before fading. Len loops the kid's arm over his shoulder and goes off with him. 

There's a convenient warehouse that'll do for privacy purposes not five minutes’ walk away. 

Len drops the kid into a chair, making a face as he ties him up. It's all out of order - makes him queasy, honestly - but this target had a kill or two on his record already, and he liked to tie them up first, and anyway Mick had insisted that Len do something like this so people wouldn't catch on to his tricks.

Still, the sedative was strong enough that the pre-death ligature marks could sink into the kid's flesh without actually causing him harm. Len figures he'll wait fifteen or twenty minutes, then kill him and get started. 

The sedative _should_ have been good for the whole evening.

As a result, Len is still playing Pokémon Go on his phone and cursing the Zubats when he hears an almost unbelievable sound.

A groan of wakefulness.

He looks up in disbelief, but no, the kid really is stirring. Waking up. _How?_

Len's question is answered a minute later when the kid wakes up a little more - still woozy, clearly, but with the drug leaving his system at a ridiculously fast clip - and sees Len, struggles to stand in a panic, looks down, sees the rope, then - with an all too familiar crackle of lightning - begins to vibrate so fast that the ropes sizzles as they drop off his skin.

Len puts his phone down. "Doesn't that mess with your clothing?" he drawls.

The kid - Barry Allen, CSI for the CCPD, and, apparently, _the Flash_ \- freezes.

"Uh," he says.

"That's why you use the Flash suit," Len concludes, observing how Barry's clothing was also sizzling a bit. "Can't you run through things now? I swear I saw you do it with a bomb and a truck. Ghosting right through it."

"We call it phasing -" Barry says stupidly, but Len can forgive him; the sedative is still in his system. "What – but – how did you figure out who I was?"

Len hadn't, of course, but he's not going to throw away a perfectly good opener. "I have my ways," he says instead. Then he smiles. "Not much you can do to me now that I know who you are."

"I _could_ spirit you off to my private prison where you'll never see the light of day again," Barry replies, aiming for bravado.

"And then who would keep my public uplink of your identify from being broadcast to the whole world?" Len lies. It's a good lie; he's used it on serial killers who are trying to hide their identities before. Barry seems just as horrified by the concept, though presumably for different reasons. "Seems we're at an impasse."

Barry swallows.

"Also, private prison? Ain't that illegal?"

"It's just temporary! The normal prisons can't hold the metas -"

"But they do have trials before they go in, right?" Len asks, frowning a bit. "Visitation with family? Access to a lawyer? Yard time? Prison industry?"

"Um…"

"Do you know _anything_ about prisons?"

"I've...visited...one?"

“Who’s the warden? The guards? Do you make sure the prisoners get their legally required amount of exercise and sunlight? You know that lack of sunlight has all sorts of bad effects, rights?”

“Um.” Barry’s face is starting to go red. 

“I mean, even with your speed, it seems like a lot of work,” Len says, making a face. “It’s not like you keep people in solitary all the time, right? That’s torture. Literally, I think.”

Barry doesn’t say anything, but he’s blushing.

“You…know that that’s torture, right?” Len asks, mildly horrified. Seriously, he’s a _serial killer_ and he knows better! “I mean, kid, even if you didn’t read up on how prisons are supposed to work, you’re not too young to have missed the whole ‘why Guantanamo is evil’ shit, right? Or are you one of those pro-torture, I-watched-24-once-and-thought-it-was-reality-TV sort of –”

“No!” Barry exclaims. “I mean, I just – I guess I never thought about it?”

Len arches his eyebrows. “U.S. Constitution,” he drawls. “Eighth Amendment. No cruel and unusual punishment. Or, if you like, try the Fifth Amendment on for size: ‘No person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.’ Or do you not consider metas ‘persons’?”

“I – did you kidnap me for a crash course in _civics_?” 

“Well, you clearly need one,” Len sniffs. “And no. Mick and I want our guns back.”

“I’m not giving you your guns back! Cisco dismantled them!”

“He can re-make them.”

“Yes, but he’s not _going to_.”

“He will if we kidnap his friends and family and threaten their lives,” Len points out. 

Barry points at him. “That’s against the Constitution, too!”

“No, you _moron_ , it’s against Missouri law 565.110, making kidnapping a class A felony. Fuck, Flash, don’t you work for the _police_?”

“I…knew that.” At Len’s incredulous look, Barry flushes again. “I did! I just – got over-excited. Jumped the gun.”

“Happens to you a lot, does it now?”

“Oh, shut _up_. You’re the one talking about committing class A felonies.”

“I’m the _supervillain_ ,” Len says, taking care to enunciate as slowly and condescendingly as possible. “You’re the _superhero_. Do. You. See. The. Problem. Here?”

Barry crosses his arms and glares. 

“Anyway, I figured we’d make a deal,” Len says. He’s playing this by ear. “You get us our guns back and no _spiriting off_ to any prisons, and in return, we promise to keep off any friends and family you have _and_ not tell anyone who you are.”

Barry hesitates. As well he should; it’s a fine deal, if Len has anything to say about it. “I can’t let you go around killing people,” he says.

Len arches an eyebrow.

“If you’re as good a thief as everyone says, you shouldn’t have to kill anyone to commit your heists,” Barry says, sounding out his words slowly enough that Len can tell he’s coming up with it on the spot. “Agree to that, and, well. If you guys keep yourselves to stealing, then I’ll still try to stop you, but I won’t take you away or anything.”

“Leave us to the police,” Len says thoughtfully. “Yes, that makes sense. Fine – no killing while supervillaining, no touching your friends and family, no telling anyone who you are. You want me to make you a sandwich while we’re at it?”

“You’re a dick,” Barry says, but his lips are twitching. “Okay. You do all of that and I’ll –” he makes a face. “– I’ll convince Cisco to re-make your guns.”

“Plus one extra.”

“What do you mean, plus one extra?”

“Give Cisco a day or two, he’ll know what I mean,” Len says. 

“What…?”

“He’ll thank you not to interfere.”

“You can’t just leave it at that.”

“A very pretty girl that works with my crew thinks he’s cute,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “But she also wants a gun for her own. I’ll tell her she has to convince him herself. Be a good friend and don’t stand between your buddy and his destiny.”

Barry’s smiling, now. “She won’t hurt him?”

“She _actually_ thinks he’s cute,” Len says, not without some disgust. "If he plays his card right, he might get lucky."

“Okay. Well. I’ll ask him. But –”

“Hold up!” Len says, scooping up his phone. “I don’t have this one yet.”

“This – are you playing _Pokémon Go_?”

“Yep.”

“This is the weirdest kidnapping ever.”

“I wasn’t actually expecting you to wake up quite that fast,” Len says, watching his screen avidly as – yes! It’s caught. 

He shuts off the game, only to find Barry looking around the warehouse with a frown. “Why’d you bring me here?” he asks. “If you weren’t expecting me to wake up that fast. You’d figured out I was the Flash, right?”

“Well, no,” Len says, smirking at how Barry’s face falls in the realization. “Not until you did your rope-burning trick. Not my fault you assumed I was smarter than I was.”

“But you said –”

“I _lied_. Obviously.”

“Then why _did_ you bring me here?”

Len shrugs. “I was hoping to set up a trap for the Vulture of McFeeny Park.”

And that’s even technically true, not that he’ll be confessing to _how_ he planned to trap him. He’s not telling the superhero that he’s a serial killer.

But Barry’s eyes are going wide and – admiring? What?

“You were trying to catch a serial killer?” Barry says eagerly. “You do that?”

“Uh. Yeah. I try to lure ‘em in and get them to leave evidence lying around, so that the police can catch ‘em,” Len says, which is about half truth. 

“Wow,” Barry says. He sounds impressed. “That’s – that’s really cool. That’s _awesome_. So you’re secretly a hero, too!”

“What? No!”

“I’ll get those guns for you,” Barry says happily. “They’ll help, won’t they?”

“I mean – I guess –”

“Don’t worry,” Barry assures a gaping Len. “I won’t tell anyone and ruin your reputation. I still don’t like your stealing, but getting those killers off the street – I’m glad we can agree on something!”

“Yes, there’s at least that,” Len says, bemused. That one is a complete lie. 

Barry beams at him. “You know,” he says. “For a thief, there’s a lot of good in you.”

And with that, a crackle of lighting and a gust of wind, he’s gone.

“What the fuck just happened?” Len asks the air.

He didn’t even get to _kill_ anybody.

Out of other options, he goes home and tells Mick, who unhelpfully laughs himself sick over it.

“There, there,” he says, snickering and patting a scowling Len’s shoulder. “Looks like the Flash left you with a set of blue balls to go with your blue costume.”

“That’s _not_ funny.”

“It really, really is, Mr. Secret Superhero.”

“I don’t even know how he _reached_ that conclusion!”

Mick shrugs, barely suppressing a smirk. “I don’t know,” he says. “Guess he just – _moved too fast_.”

Len has to kiss him for that one.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

Barry comes to find Len after that, usually at the bar Len prefers to use as a hunting ground. 

Sadly, his visits are – 

Helpful.

 _Incredibly_ helpful.

“We think we’ve gotten something on the Salisbury Street Slasher,” Barry tells him in a confidential tone. 

“Really?” Len asks, perking up. He’d been looking for the bastard himself; it’s hard to tell who to set up when there’s an actual serial killer out there that he _can’t find_ , though Len has taken advantage of the very notable technique to cover a one of his own kills so he’s feeling nice and peppy at the moment. “What d’you got?”

“Gravel from the wounds indicates fertilizer.”

“In _Salisbury Street_? Nothing grows there.”

“I know! Which means he kills them elsewhere.”

“The blood spray indicates he kills them there, though,” Len argues, frowning. Even he’d assumed they were killed on the street, albeit in the nooks and crannies of it. 

Barry deflates. “Yeah, I know. But how else would it have gotten there? Nothing grows on Salisbury Street is practically a Central City saying.”

Len nods. He’d always hated that street – he remembered walking along it as a kid, hurrying along because it smelled so bad –

“Factory,” Len says aloud.

“What?”

“There used to be a factory on Salisbury Street. Closed down ages ago.”

“No, there wasn’t,” Barry argues. “We looked up the records –”

“Oh, sure, the _records_ ,” Len says, rolling his eyes. “That used to be on my way – it was unlicensed, they used to hang out a sign out front, some sort of restaurant, but you could smell the grease and the shit for miles. It was a Family joint; they built bombs.”

“Bombs,” Barry says. “With – fertilizer? But if it’s been closed for decades –”

“Didn’t you say the initial injuries looked defensive?” Len asks, reaching for the file Barry had hopefully brought with him (for the fourth time) and paging through it. “Here – on this page.” He jabs his finger down on the first medical report.

“Yeah, so?”

“They’re running,” Len says, seeing it before his eyes. “He brings them to the factory and lays them down on the ground. They wake up. He’s there, with the knife. He attacks, but to wound, not kill. They run – they try to escape – he _harries_ them, like a sheepdog with a herd, getting them to where he wants them to go – he lets them get out the only open door, the one to Salisbury Street – and once they’re on the street, he frenzies.”

“That would explain the initial wounds – and the blood sprays!” Barry beams. “You’re really good at this, you know?”

“Thanks,” Len replies dryly. He hadn’t _intended_ to be. Really. He’d intended to ignore Barry entirely. 

“You know, the CCPD could really help of someone like you, if you –”

“Do you know how many felonies I have on my record, Barry?”

“…point.”

Len turns back to his fries, assuming that the conversation is over, but Barry does not, in fact, slink out. 

“What else?”

“Sooooo, about that illegal prison stuff. I think we need to get them out of there.”

“You needed them out of there months ago.”

“But the CCPD isn’t prepared for them.”

“Offer to hold them pending trial.”

“But then they’d know we use STAR Labs as a base!”

“Everyone already knows you use STAR Labs as a base.”

“…oh.”

“Think of something,” Len advised.

A week later, he listens to Barry explain everything and then says, quite flatly, “That’s not an acceptable something.”

“But Oli- er, Green Arrow, he says that ARGUS is safe –”

“Ask _Oli_ what he knows about the Suicide Squad. Yes, I mean right now. Go on, I’ll wait.”

“Is he always like this?” Mick asks, watching Barry go outside to make the call.

“Yes,” Len says grumpily. “I have a six foot puppy following me around calling me a _hero_.”

Mick sniggers. “Well, you do stop bad guys,” he says.

“In my own _very special_ way,” Len says, scowling at him.

“Still counts,” Mick says with the cheery, peaceful casualness of someone who knows they are a serial killer’s best beloved and therefore immune. 

Goddamn angels.

“Any thoughts on how to resolve the problem?” he asks.

“Prison break. Gets them in our debt, which we can twist over just long enough to convince them to leave the city – or warn us when they come back.”

“I’ll suggest it to Barry. We’ll need to play it like some sort of betrayal for it to work.”

“Not hard.”

“True…”

The plan ends up going off without a hitch.

Mick is a _little_ annoyed about Len locking him in their bedroom to keep him safe from the potentially dangerous metas, but whatever. He’ll get over it.

It’s nothing, Len reflects, to the way he’s going to react when he finds out what just happened.

“Hi, Dad,” Len says weakly from where he’s lying in the back of a van.

Lewis smiles at him, and suddenly Len is six again, is seven again, is eight again, and he’s _terrified_.

“It’s good to see you, son,” Lewis says.

Len shudders and collapses in on himself.

See, Len may have – fudged the truth a bit. About his dad’s general state of life versus non-life. Generally speaking.

Okay, he told Mick that Lewis was dead.

Totally dead.

There may have been the implication that Len was involved.

This was all a lie.

See, Len has done a marvelous job of keeping Mick from ever meeting Lewis, which means he can’t kill Lewis. It’s not right. It’s – he _can’t_. Not his dad. 

His dad needs to be a sacrifice, or Len can’t kill him. 

Lewis can never be one of those that Len kills from simple necessity.

He needs to kill someone, needs it desperately, but he doesn’t dare, not with his father around. He feels it, the clawing anxiety, the terror; if he doesn’t get out soon, he’ll lose it, and that will be the end of everything. 

But Lewis has a bomb in Lisa’s head.

Len can't lose Lisa.

He can’t, he can’t, he _can’t_ – 

Barry’s interference is far more dangerous than Barry knows. 

Barry met Mick.

Barry _knows_ Mick.

He could be one.

He could be a sacrifice. 

But no – then Len wouldn’t be able to play with the Flash. No murder with your supervillainy.

He promised.

But he _wants_ to.

Mick is there, though, when the Flash comes to stop them, bursting in through the door. Len’s partner, Len’s back-up, Len’s _savior_.

Len’s angel.

“Mick,” he croaks, staring at him, even as he holds the cold gun on Barry on his father’s orders.

Lewis’ face twists in disgust. “So you’re the moronic arsonist that’s leading my boy around by his dick,” he sneers. “I’ve heard so much about you, you filthy little –”

“You have?” Len cuts in, eyes going wide. 

He knows Barry’s misreading it, Barry thinks it’s because he tried so hard to keep Mick away from it, because Mick would have told them about Len’s lies and Len’s avoidance and Len doing everything he could to keep his angel from finding on what went on in his home, because Len loves his angel and fears his father.

It’s not that.

It’s not that at all.

Len never considered that Mick could affect people without them meeting. Never thought that Lewis would see Mick as a giant figure in his life, a turning figure, the figure that _took Len away from him_.

All is as it ought to be.

Len is saved, yet again, by his angel.

He’s not a child anymore.

Akedah – the father offering his child to God, only to be stopped by an angel. 

Well, the child is no child any longer.

He’s fully grown, and when the angel saves him, he turns to his father not in forgiveness, but in rage.

“Lisa’s safe,” Barry announces.

Lewis turns his gun onto Mick, his eyes crazed with hate.

Len shoots him through the heart, falling to his knees even as his father does.

His father’s lips move, questioning, and Len leans forward, dropping the cold gun to catch him. “Bye-bye, Dad,” he whispers. “I don’t want it to hurt too long.”

And even as he holds his father, even as he stares in to his eyes, the life that so terrified Len fades away.

“Mick,” he says again, not even hearing Barry’s comments – ‘Lisa was safe’ and ‘why would you’ and – “Mick, _please_.”

“I got you,” Mick says, and presses the rope into his hand before turning to Barry and picking up the hero to cart him outside, Barry audibly yelping as he does.

Len vaguely hears Mick saying something about trauma and catharsis and some of the other stuff he finds in the irregular psychology books Mick reads a lot of, but he doesn’t care.

He has his sacrifice.

First, the angel. 

Mick, who came once again to rescue Len. 

Second, the death.

There was no pain. That’s the important part; even with his father, who caused him such pain, it is important.

Last, the binding.

Len’s aware that his hands are shaking and that his cheeks are wet. He may be crying. He’s not sure.

He wraps the rope around. He’s done it so many times before, but it was nothing like this. 

This is what they were all supposed to be, every one of them. 

This is _perfect_.

_Yes._

When it’s done, he rocks back onto his heels and just stares. His lips are dry, his eyes are wide, and his mind is –

Quiet.

Yes.

He needed this.

He didn’t even know, but he needed this more than air.

This memory will last him a good long time.

He doesn’t stir until he feels the hand on his shoulder.

“Len,” Mick says, voice gentle. “We have to go. The cops are coming.”

Len doesn’t want to, but he can’t seem to speak.

“Let me take care of him.”

Len nods. The angel will always save him. He can trust him.

Mick’s heat gun makes quick work of the body, turned up to max as it is.

A burnt offering.

How appropriate.

After that, Mick helps Len up and helps him out the door.

Barry’s pacing around there, zipping from side to side at too-quick speed, literally wearing a hole into the carpet, but he stops when he sees Len.

Judging from his expression, Len’s composure must have totally broken down at some point. Len’s not sure when, he doesn’t – he doesn’t _feel_ anything. Nothing but satisfaction, endless, glorious satisfaction. 

His mind is quiet.

He likes that.

Barry says something, and Mick says something back, but Len can’t hear them. 

It’s okay. He doesn’t need to.

The angel will take care of him.

Barry wraps his hands around Len saying – Len’s not quite sure, something about going elsewhere. 

He vaguely recalls saying something to Barry, but he’s not sure what. 

Barry smiles a little, then suddenly everything is moving, and they’re back at STAR Labs. Barry helps Len onto a medical bed, which seems like a weird thing to have there. 

Barry disappears, then reappears with Mick.

The girl comes to him with a needle.

“Did I kidnap you once?” Len asks her.

“It’s okay,” she says, sticking him with the needle. “I got over it.”

Len wonders if she’s going to kill him too.

He goes under.

When he wakes up, it’s late.

“Mick?” he croaks.

There’s a grunt from the chair next to his bed. “Lenny?”

“What happened?”

“You freaked,” Mick says, rubbing his eyes. “It’s okay. It was sufficiently over-the-top to convince Barry you’d had either a psychotic break or a panic attack at the thought of that bastard being gone at last.”

“Just a bit of one,” Len says, rubbing his own eyes in sympathy. “Then what?”

“He was pretty sympathetic, so he brought us back here. Doc-girl gave you a sedative. You okay now?”

“Yeah,” Len says. “I think so.”

“No ‘pizza’ for the STAR Labs crew,” Mick says. “I’m just putting that out there right now. Got it?”

Len smiles. “We’ll get them cake instead,” he promises. “We should go before they wake up.”

Mick grunts in agreement.

They make their way out of STAR Labs, then to a car – Mick hotwires it – and then back to one of their safehouses. 

Len’s just crawling into bed when Mick says, “Len?”

“Yeah?”

“I’ve got a question that’s been bugging me.”

“Go ahead.”

“What the hell does _cake_ stand for?”

Len starts laughing. 

“What? I’m serious! If pizza is murder, then cake is –”

“It means _from a bakery_ , you _fucker_.”

“…oh.” Mick thinks about this for a second. “Can we get them a baked Alaska?”

“Isn’t that the dessert that’s ice cream but on fire?”

“Seemed like it fit,” Mick grins.

Len rolls his eyes and scoots over on the bed so Mick can crawl in.

Then he closes his eyes and dreams all night of that perfect moment of murder.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

The time traveler makes an interesting offer, and so they go. Len agrees - reluctantly - that he'll refrain from too much 'pizza', as Mick still calls it, while on their voyage.

"So you're an undead assassin?" Len asks the woman going by 'White Canary'.

"And you're a thief," she replies, sounding unimpressed. "And still staring at my ass."

Len is amused. 

"What's so funny?"

"I'm not staring at your ass."

She raises her eyebrows. "Listen, I know when a man is staring at my -"

"I'm staring, as you put it, at the _very_ impressive set of throwing knives plucked out into your clothing," Len says. "Which, through no fault of my own, happen to be right above your ass." 

She throws her hair with a sniff, though he can tell she's a little impressed.

"Sharp eyes must help with your stealing," she says.

"That ass probably helps with your killing," he replies.

She rolls her eyes and goes.

He decides to keep an eye on her. She’s easily a better fighter than him, so if he were to try to take her down, he’d need to use the element of surprise – 

"No pizza, boss," Mick reminds him.

"She doesn't even fit the criteria," Len protests. 

"Yet."

Len smirks. "Yet."

Mick rolls his eyes. "Be nice to the new crew, Snart."

A few months later, Mick's singing a different tune.

Len goes down to where they'd put Mick after Len had knocked him out, despite Len's protests that Mick would be fine.

"That was _not_ okay," Mick snarls.

"You know I'll never let you go," Len replies, keeping his calm. "Not sure why you're surprised."

"You're becoming that _hero_ you pretend to be for Allen."

"Not with my _pizza_ habit," Len reminds him. "No hero squad would take me."

"What was _wrong_ with 2046, then?" Mick asks, his rage fading into simple confusion at the reminder that Len would always pick him first. He has such self-confidence problems for someone who has a literal serial killer worshiping him. "We could've lived like kings."

"No kings to a mob," Len says. "No impact. Your noise would have been lost in the sea. Do you know, it was barely worthwhile sacrificing one of your groupies?"

Mick groans. "Because of _course_ you did."

"Naturally," Len says. "I would've in Russia, too, but I was too busy being worried about _you_."

"At least if it's in the future, it doesn't affect the past," Mick grumbles. "You were concerned for the lack of pizza?"

"Would've found that anywhere, you're too important not to make an impact, but it's not where we belong," Len says firmly. "Besides, something felt - off."

"Off?"

"Alexa off."

"Why do you think?"

Len thinks about it. It was nothing he could really put his finger on, but it had started when he’d looked down and seen -

"Tire tracks."

"What?"

"Tracks, on the asphalt. Something was wrong with 'em. Smelled like pig." He pauses. "Or military.

Mick nods slowly. "We got out before the crack-down?"

"Think so."

"Couldn't you have just _said_ so?"

"I'd kill you before I let you go," Len says. "There wasn't time to argue."

Mick rolls his eyes, but his good humor is back - mostly.

He's still twitchy. Claustrophobic. Angry.

He sells out the team to a group of pirates, which is most unlike him, and Len has to knock him out again.

After, though, the team –

“You want me to take care of him,” Len says flatly, guessing where Rip was going with it in his circuitous way.

“We can’t afford a stop in 2016, not while we’re being tracked by the Hunters, and our families are there,” Sara says, crossing her arms. “We can’t risk it.”

“I’m certain Mr. Snart can, ah, take care of the problem,” Rip says. “Isn’t that correct, Mr. Snart?”

“Sure,” Len says. “No problem – short the light system with a kick to the auxiliaries to disable Gideon, blast Sara to the chest, then Jax next – sorry, Jax; promise it’ll be quick – to prevent a Firestorm merger –”

“What you talking about?” Jax asks, alarmed.

“I agree with Mr. Jefferson,” Stein says. “What in the world…?”

“You want me to take care of the problem,” Len says, smiling nice and calm and with his hand oh-so-casually on his gun. “Right now, the _problem_ , as I see it, is a crew full of people who seem like they’d like to put _my partner_ down like a goddamn dog, but don’t have the guts to say it out loud. The _problem_ can be solved by me killing all of you, freeing Mick from the brig, and the two of us working out how to turn this ship around and take us home.”

He pauses, looks over their faces. Sara’s balanced on her feet, ready to take him on if need be; the others just look sick with the realization of what they were discussing.

“Or we could go the easy route,” Len says. 

“And what’s that?” Sara asks, shoulders still tense.

“We could drop him off somewhere safe –” Rip starts.

“I give you my word that Mick will behave,” Len says, ignoring Rip. “And you trust me to control him. Other option, you drop _both_ of us off at home. I’m not going anywhere without him.”

“And what if we drop both of you off somewhere safe?” Sara says, meeting Len’s gaze, eyes challenging. 

“I don’t think –” Ray objects.

“Well?” Sara says.

Len smiles. “You do that,” he says. “And we’ll make the biggest time anomaly around, something you can see for goddamn miles, and when the Time Masters come by to put an end to it, we’ll hitch a ride and sell you down the goddamn river if that’s what it takes. I’m happy to be a part of your crew, but that means the _whole_ crew is in – and no one goes _out_ unless we all agree. Me and Mick are a package deal. Your pick.”

“I’m not okay with killing Rory,” Jax says. “Or ditching him somewhere. Just putting it out there on the record.”

“Neither am I,” Ray says.

“I agree,” Kendra adds. “We’re _heroes_. Not killers.” She eyes Sara.

Sara slowly relaxes her stance. “Okay, then,” she says. “Rip?”

“If Mr. Snart believes he can assure Mr. Rory’s good behavior from now on, I say we let him,” Rip says. “Let us continue.”

Len goes to Mick, helps his unconscious partner back to their room and _seethes_.

When Mick wakes up, he's angry.

"So what's the verdict?" he asks, sneering.

"Why'd you do that bit with the pirates?" Len asks instead. "It's not like you."

"I'm not confessing my motives to you," Mick snarls. "What's the goddamn verdict? Back to 2016? The brig? Being put down?"

"The only person being put down is the next person who suggests that anything happen to you," Len says firmly. "No verdict, Mick. I told 'em I'd kill them all, first."

Mick blinks. "You - did?"

"Of course I did! You knew I would, too, so again I ask, what's _up_ with you?"

"I -" Mick seems at a loss. "I don't know." He scrubs his head. "I feel really bad, Lenny. I feel like I've _got_ to get off of this ship."

"We will, for the next mission. I'll make sure there's something for you to burn -"

Mick flinches.

"What's up?" Len asks again, gaze sharpening. "What aren't you telling me?"

"Nothing."

Len considers this obvious lie. "What if I promised not to retaliate?" he asks. His angel's too goddamn soft-hearted sometimes; that's why this is so out of character.

"It's really nothing. Rip said I wasn't brought along 'cause of my fire or anything, I was brought along because you wouldn't go without me."

"Of course I wouldn't go without you," Len says. "You're worth a thousand of them."

Mick exhales, long and slow. "Yeah. It's not the first time someone's said that, either, or implied that I'm just dumb dead weight -"

"He said _what_ ," Len says flatly.

"No retaliation, boss, you said."

"I said, ' _what if_ I promised'," Len replies, scowling. "But you've been acting weird since 2046 at least, if not earlier, so it ain’t just some fucker – Rip, I assume? – who’s gotten under your skin. I want to know what’s going on with _you_. That's more important to me."

"I don't know. I just - I feel charged up, caged in, and I don't know why."

Len frowns. "Something on board triggering you?"

"No, there aren't any of my regular triggers," Mick replies. "Just - feelings. Urges to act. So I act out, like the stupid thug everyone thinks I am."

Len's frown deepens. "It's not like you," he repeats. "Not like you _really_. But it's a bit like something someone who'd only ever heard of you might think you act like."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Not sure yet. Just - everybody else was on board with me offing you, you know."

"Gee, that's good to know."

"No, it's - could you imagine Barry agreeing to that?"

"Never," Mick says immediately.

"So either Rip's collected himself the worst set of heroes in existence, or something's up."

"Former seems more likely."

"Well, yeah, but – Jax? Ray? Kendra?"

"...okay, yeah, that's a bit weird. I wouldn't have pegged them as the type to wink away murder in the first."

"After I gave them a push, made them think about what they were doing, they did protest. But before that, it was almost like they were in a daze."

"What're you thinking?"

"I dunno," Len says. "Like someone's controlling our feelings or something. Seems dumb when I say it out loud."

Mick frowns, thinking about it. "I know you'd never let me go," he says. "Not alive, at any rate, and if I died, you'd probably kill a lot of people and then die too. Accepted that long time ago. But I keep doing things to make you ditch me - and I keep expecting that you _will_ , too, totally convinced of it, even though that's dumb."

"Then why aren't I affected?" Len asks. "I never even thought about ditching you."

"You don't have emotions like a regular person, Lenny," Mick says, rolling his eyes. "But if no one ever catches onto your pizza habit, then you're just a regular thief in other people's eyes. The eyes of history."

"History - you finger Rip for it?"

"Maybe Rip," Mick says. "Or maybe he's being played, too. This whole mission is all about his dead wife and kid, right? Feelings."

"I guess," Len says, only slightly doubtfully. He doesn't always get feelings, not beyond Lisa (protection) and Mick (worship) and maybe a bit of fear for his (dead! beautifully, gloriously dead!) dad. But perhaps that's the point - if they weren't playing on his compulsion to kill, he wouldn't have noticed. It takes up too much of his brain for him to notice other compulsions. "What do we do?"

"Keep a better eye on it, I guess. Tell the others."

"They'll laugh," Len warns.

Mick shrugs. "Best I can think of. You're the planner, boss. Get planning."

Len does his best, but it's impossible to get some time to focus. Everything keeps going wrong.

Maybe they _are_ being played. But how?

They eventually figure it out.

But then -

The Oculus.

Mick pays back his debt to Ray, the one that’s been gnawing at him from the inside for months. 

And Len -

Len will never let Mick be hurt if he could stop it.

He wonders for half a second if that's why Mick does it that way - if he's tired of Len's endless possessiveness, if he wants a way out, if he wants to put an end to the death and the murder and everything -

But no.

Len has faith in his angel.

Len sends Mick's unconscious body away.

And he binds himself to the Oculus, ties himself into the sacrifice post.

"You wouldn’t dare! You'll die too!" a Time Master screams at him.

Len shakes his head.

There’s a chance, of course, that this will kill him, and to die in service of Mick is his fondest dream. But he doesn’t think he’ll die.

No, you see, he's been chosen.

He's been bound, he is to be sacrificed.

He will not die.

His angel will save him.

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“You know, you’re not who I was expecting,” Len tells the angel of death. “But I guess you’ll do.”

The angel of death shrugs.

He doesn’t speak – his jaw is unhinged, his mind crazed, a perfect study in death and decay – but he knows how to make his intentions clear.

He jabs at an image of a man.

Len frowns at it. “I see. He’s the one you want?”

The angel of death nods.

“And you can’t get him yourself..?”

A bestial growl.

“I see.”

The image moves – not just moves, it _crackles_.

“I _see_. A speedster, trying to outrun his fate?”

The angel of death nods.

“Okay,” Len says. “I can help with that. But first, I got a question.”

The angel of death arches his eyebrows, barely visible under the decay and the suit.

“Do all you speedsters have to wear variations of the Flash suit, or is that more of an aesthetic choice? ‘cause it’s a bit repetitive, with the piping and the texture and the –”

The angel of death growls.

Len thinks that growl sounded slightly amused, though. “Fine, fine,” he says. “I’m in.”

The angel of death smiles.

Well, Len _thinks_ he smiles? It’s hard to tell, what with the rotting jaw and all that.

And then the angel of death wraps Len in his arms and _kisses_ him. 

Len gags. 

The angel of death releases him. 

“Sorry,” Len says, wiping his mouth. “I’m a one-angel man, and I’m taken.”

The angel of death laughs, a wet, hacking sound.

Len feels it a moment later. The crackling feeling, like what you’d imagine touching lightning would feel like. 

It’s coming from _inside_ of him.

He puts a hand to his chest. “I’m not meant to be a speedster,” he reminds the angel of death.

The angel of death takes his other hand, and pulls gently.

Len follows.

And then they begin to run.

Faster and faster and faster, until they’re running in an all-too-familiar sea of green swirls.

_Time._

Fuck, Len hates running. “Have you considered a fast walk?” he calls to the angel of death. “Maybe a steady jog? Not everything has to be a sprint! Sometimes it’s about stamina, not speed!”

He can see the angel of death rolling his eyes at him.

And then –

They arrive.

“Where are we?” Len asks, shaking the angel loose. “This ain’t 2017. It’s – 2012. No, 2013.”

The angel of death tilts his head at Len in a curious sort of way.

Len jabs his finger at the movie poster behind him. “Bad movie, still won an Oscar,” he explains. 

The angel of death snorts. He points at Len, coming out of a bar, looking a bit dazed.

Len frowns, trying to remember – why was he at that bar? It wasn’t entirely his style, it was Mick’s, and Mick had been doing the ‘I need some time alone with long walks to think about shit’ shtick at the time.

And then, abruptly, he remembers a meeting, Mick asking him to come, Mick telling him he’s the best man he’s ever met.

“That never happened,” Len says suspiciously.

The angel of death nods and points.

Len sees the Waverider, hovering there.

“Oh,” he says. “So what’s the plan?”

The angel of death smiles. 

Len does not like that smile.

He likes the idea of sitting inside the Waverider for however long it’ll take to come back into synch with the timeline even less, but apparently it’s _necessary_ to fix the temporal float and wear out the Oculus energy that’d infused with him in the second before the angel of death had come for him.

He has to admit that it’s necessary. Months go by without him noticing. Decades, at one point, when they’re trapped under the sea – he goes to pet Mick’s face a few times, because he misses him, but then returns to the hiding-hole that even Gideon doesn’t know about, and time blurs around him once more.

After that period, though, it starts to slow down, bits and pieces. A few hours a week of awareness. 

He mostly spends it watching the crew. 

At first it’s okay. Mick and the others, having adventures. None of the others replacing Len, of course, as is just, but well enough. 

But then –

It’s not okay.

_What are they doing?_

How _dare_ they treat Mick that way? Len’s partner, Len’s _angel_ , being treated like dirt? _Who do they think they are?!_

Len, who has been feeling remarkably _un_ -compelled this whole time, starts feeling that old need.

His fingers twitching.

His eyes narrowing.

Yes.

Time to fulfil a few old promises of his.

 _I’d crawl out of my grave for you_ , he’d told Mick, and he meant it.

 _I’d kill all of you first_ , he’d told Sara, and he meant that, too.

Len smiles.

He bides his time until he can actually feel each passing hour, even if they sometimes jump by too fast for him. He _waits_.

And then the moment comes.

The Target comes, his “Legion of Doom” flanking him, smirk on each face.

The Legends stand ready to face off against them.

The usual pre-battle exchange of mockery and quips is taking place.

Len reaches for the wall. "Gideon," he says, his voice returned to him now that he was back in time. "Override, code ‘black flash'. Shut down autonomous function and lock the doors; get us into the time stream."

Gideon doesn't even have enough time to utter a gurgled protest before her conscious mind is shut off.

Not the most satisfying, but it'll do for now. Pity how Rip continuously forgets that he is only Gideon's keeper - his carefully programmed code words are useless to someone with root access.

 _Creator_ access.

Len doesn't ask how the angel of death knew these things, nor how he learned them. It's irrelevant.

All the people on board are shouting - Legends and Legion both.

"Hold up!" one of them - Malcolm Merlyn, the name slithering out of Len's subconscious - shouts above the rest. "If you didn't do it, and _we_ didn't do it, then who the hell did it?"

"I don't see why we'd believe that you bastards didn't do it," Sara says, but there's a thread of doubt in her voice.

"Easily solved," Rip says, condescending as always. "Gideon, who triggered the launch?"

There is no reply.

Len smiles. 

"Gideon? Answer me! Gideon!"

Len thinks for a moment, then smiles. "Gideon," he drawls to the mindless AI. "Please announce the following over the intercom, in your own voice..."

A few seconds later, Gideon's voice - warm, mature female - speaks. "I'm sorry," she - it - says. "Gideon can't come to the phone right now. Would you like to leave a message?"

Pandemonium.

"Gideon," Len drawls, smile growing. "Lights."

The lights turn off.

Now, Len is up against some of the finest killers in the world. Three former League of Assassins members, a former Time Master, a murderous speedster, two metahumans, a woman with a necklace to give her animal powers, a man with a shrinking suit, and - at least until Len can reveal himself - Mick, who is certainly not the least of the lot.

Len has no cold gun; Ray put paid to that. He has no powers, beyond his control of the ship via a password given to him by an angel. He has nothing more than a knife, a gun, and his brain.

He's going to need a lot of rope to make these sacrifices. 

In a normal situation, he'd go after the powerhouse - the speedster - first. But he doesn't want to play his trump card too soon. 

No, the first target should be he who deserves death least. He'd suffer less.

The Legion and the Legends are brokering a temporary truce until they identify the relevant person doing this, since neither side trusts the other to assemble the spear.

They split up.

It's almost like they've never even seen a horror movie.

The speedster searches his half of the ship within minutes.

"Nothing!" he snarls.

"Don't use your speed too much," Darkh growls back.

Len shakes his head and opens a wall.

Turns out 45 years of sitting around, even in a time bubble, shows you a lot of secrets. 

Firestorm is merged, of course. But Len was their teammate. He's seen them fight - and he's seen them fall.

He picks up a chair and, creeping up behind them, slams it down on their head.

They immediately tumble apart, shouting in surprise and disorientation.

Len strikes.

A gun is a marvelous thing, if you don't mind using it.

Jax is dead before he hits the ground.

Poor kid. Should've listened to his school's anti-bullying lessons.

"Jefferson?" Stein says, hand rising to his ear in a protective gesture; that gunshot has been pretty damn loud.

Len slinks back into the wall.

"Jefferson! Jefferson, no!"

The speedster is there within seconds. "Well, shit," he says.

Len rolls his eyes as the crew gather to discuss. The speedster searches the whole ship this time, but returns empty handed. Sara devises a plan to lure out 'the fucker that killed Jax' by sending out people alone, but well-armed.

Darkh rolls his eyes and leans back against the wall. "How do we pick?" he says. "Drawing straws, perhaps? Or maybe we should send one of your people - the useless grandfather, maybe, or the equally useless arsonist."

Well, that makes an easy choice.

"Gideon," Len says, inching closer. "Alarms and lights."

Both go off, sirens blaring, lights flashing. 

In the confusion, the wall behind Darkh opens just enough for Len's knife.

No pain.

It's important. Even if the victim is an asshole.

The lights stop, going back to generator only. The noise ends.

Darkh slips down the wall in a growing pool of his own blood.

Sara wails with rage.

Not like Jax, accompanied by sorrow, but the rage of a hunter robbed of its prey.

They put the bodies in stasis in the medbay. Rip promises both sides a revival, once Gideon is operational once more.

Len rolls his eyes, but is pleased.

"We can't just leave them," Sara says. 

"I'll stay," Stein says. He looks tired, sad, depressed.

Like he just lost a partner.

Bet he doesn’t even _think_ about what he said to Mick, about partners being dead. 

The Legends and Legion return to the bridge.

Len shakes his head in amusement. "Gideon," he drawls. "Seal the doors - and get me some rope."

The doors all slam shut, including the emergency doors.

Len ignores the muted shouting from the bridge.

Stein looks up as he approaches and gapes. "Mr. _Snart_? But you're dead -"

"Not quite," Len says, and nods at Jax's body. "It's a terrible thing, isn't it? Losing a partner?"

"I - I -" Stein might be a narcissistic stuck-up ass, but despite all appearances, he's not dumb. He can put two and two together.

Len prefers not to cause pain, or even fear, but he will do it where it's necessary.

"I'll give you a choice," he says. "You have enough time to try to explain to me in a way that I'll accept why you've been ignoring my partner's depression, mocking his intelligence and skills at every turn, reminding him of my death, and otherwise being a terrible person, _or_..."

"Or?" Stein croaks.

"You have just enough time to say the Sh'ma."

Stein swallows. They both know how short that prayer is.

"Tell Clarissa I'm sorry," he says.

Len nods, putting a kind hand on Steins’ shoulder. "I'll even tell her you died a hero," he says.

Stein closes his eyes.

Len strikes.

There is no pain.

Len binds the bodies, and leaves Jax and Stein in stasis - real stasis, Gideon freezing them in a state that could, theoretically, lead to a revival if Gideon was given the appropriate orders. Len doubts he will, but Mick was always the more kind-hearted of the two of them.

And Len will give Mick _everything_.

Darkh he binds outside of stasis and writes a note - all caps, not his regular handwriting - that says "For Sara, who never did get to avenge Laurel, and now won't have to".

And Mick says Len doesn’t know how to be nice to people.

And then he steps back into the wall and opens the doors.

Well.

Most of the doors.

Nate is the last one through the doors. The meta ability to turn to steel still needs to be activated for it to work, and he wasn't expecting the doors to slam shut so quickly.

Crunch.

"Nate!" Amaya shrieks. "Nate, oh god, _Nate_ -"

She's already activated her necklace - eagle eyes, to see in low light - but eagles don't see through walls.

"Dear god, we're in a horror movie," Merlyn says.

"We're in a remake of _Alien_ ," Mick corrects him.

“Don’t be _moronic_ ,” Merlyn replies. “There’s obviously no alien.”

Mick just shrugs. “Someone’s killing people. One by one. Why not an alien?”

“Shut up, both of you,” Ray says. 

“We need to get back to the medbay,” Sara says, eyes going wide. “If they’re not after people in specific, but all of us – Stein!”

Len lets them go there and see what he left them.

“This is _perverse_ ,” Sara snarls.

“Impressive,” Merlyn says.

“I’ve searched the ship four times,” the speedster says, clearly agitated. “There’s nobody else on board.”

“There may be places you didn’t search,” Rip says. “Smuggling nooks – passages behind walls –”

“Well, _that’s_ something that would have been useful to know before multiple people died,” Merlyn drawls.

Sara very nearly goes for his throat.

Len doesn’t much care, but the scuffle affords him an opportunity to reach out and _yank_ Amaya into his nook.

“You!” she snarls.

“Do you know who I am?” Len asks. “My name’s Leonard Snart.”

She pauses in her attack. “Mick’s old partner?”

“So they _have_ mentioned me,” Len says. “Good to know. Come on, we need to go.”

“We – need to go? Where?”

Len scowls at her. “Thought you were supposed to be competent,” he drawls, voice thick with condescending disdain. “I didn’t come back _from the dead_ to be slowed down by _idiots_. You want to get the killer or not?”

Her back straightens. “Yes, I do,” she says. “Where is he?”

“It’s complicated,” Len says. “But before more people die, you need to come with me.”

“Why haven’t you revealed yourself to the rest of the group?”

“The speedster,” Len replies. “I’m stuck tailing him; he’s the one messing with the fabric of reality. You get me?”

“The spear,” she says, eyes wide with understanding. 

Len does not, in fact, care about the Spear of Destiny. His only concern is to make sure he gets to the speedster before he gets away.

And for that, he needs Amaya out of the picture.

“Hey, animal-girl,” Len says over his shoulder. 

“It’s _Amaya_.”

“Sure,” Len says. “You familiar with mental illness?”

She frowns. “What do you mean?”

“You know, someone has fucked up brain chemistry and doctors tell them they’re crazy, do all sorts of things to them, treat them like lab rats.”

“I’m familiar with unwell minds, yes.”

“Quick note going forward,” Len says, coming to a halt next to the open door of the jump ship.

“Yes?”

“Don’t call them _animals_ ,” he says, spinning around and punching her in the face hard enough to send her staggering back into the jump ship.

Her hand shoots up to her necklace, calling upon the power of a gorilla, but Len’s already hit the button the close the door.

“Have fun back in the 1940s,” he says. “Oh, and pick a better boyfriend this time. Someone less prone to _dying_.”

He waves and hits eject.

Now, where’d everybody else go? 

Oh, dear. It seems Rip, Eobard, Merlyn, Ray and Sara – his remaining targets – have decided to try to construct the Spear in an attempt to save their friends. 

Mick’s still in the medbay. His face has gone pale and he’s staggered down into a chair. “It’s just a hallucination,” he mutters into his hand. “It’s just – it’s not him. It can’t be.”

Len wants to go to him, but he’s got some people to kill first.

He’ll make it up to Mick. He promises.

“Okay, we have all the pieces,” Sara says, even as Ray gnaws on his lower lip. “We’re agreed – _limited_ changes, just bringing back our friends and stopping Eobard’s dissolution. Then we’ll fight over any remaining changes.”

“Agreed,” Eobard says. He’s bouncing up and down, eyes avid. He wants to avoid his rightful death.

Too bad Len has no intention of letting him.

“I’m sorry, Dave,” he drawls, stepping out of the hallway. “I’m afraid I can’t let you do that.”

They turn.

“Who the hell are you?” Merlyn sneers.

“Snart?!” Sara exclaims. 

“Holy crap,” Ray says. 

“But you’re _dead_ ,” Rip says. 

But Len’s not looking at any of them. He’s looking at the speedster. And he’s smiling.

“I’m not dead,” he says. “But _he_ is.”

“He’s outrunning reality, we know,” Sara starts.

“No,” Len says. “At the moment, he’s outrunning _me_.”

Eobard scoffs. “And what, exactly, do _you_ think you’re going to do about it?”

Inside the blink of an eye, he’s standing in front of Len and has his hand around Len’s neck, hoisting him up a little, his other hand vibrating. “Give me one reason why I shouldn’t kill you right now,” he snarls. 

“Mick!” Ray shouts. “Mick – it’s Snart! Come here!”

“I have one reason,” Len says. He’s always been good at keeping his cool. “I call him the angel of death, but I think you know him best as – the Black Flash, I think you call him?”

Eobard’s eyes go wide. “No!”

Len wraps his own arms around Eobard’s neck. “Come here,” he calls, and he can _hear_ the thunder that precedes the angel of death.

“Merlyn!” Eobard calls, trying to pull away. “Kill him!”

“Hmmm,” Merlyn says. “Looks like we’ve got all the spear parts here – and that means I don’t really need you, do I?”

And then the Black Flash is there.

Sara, Rip and Ray all cry out in shock.

Mick comes to the door just in time to see the Black Flash descend upon Eobard, who tries to flee but is held tight in Len’s arms, Len releasing him only when the Black Flash takes him away, instead, disappearing in a bolt of lightning.

Though not without a pleased smile for Len, first. 

Apparently angels enjoy a sense of style.

“Well, that was impressive –” Merlyn starts, sick smirk on this face.

Len pulls out his gun and shoots him in the heart in a single move. Merlyn staggers backwards.

The look of shock on his face is – comedic.

Well, at least to Len.

“Leonard!” Sara shouts.

“Lenny,” Mick says, eyes not moving from Len’s face at all. “It really you?”

Len grins at him. “Just a bit more pizza left,” he says. “Then we can go home.”

“Pizza?” Ray says, stepping forward. “What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that the entire Legends crew seems to make a habit of putting down my partner,” Len says. “Pretending to be partners with him, then ditching him for the next guy to come around. Fucking up his life, then calling him an idiot.”

“What?” Ray says. His face is a study in confusion, the lingering remains of friendliness, the _assumption_ that Len would still be on their side. That everything was a-okay. 

"I've been here," Len snarls. "I _watched_. I couldn't make you stop, but I counted every single instance for all of you." 

"It's you," Sara says blankly. "It's been _you_. _You're_ the one who's been playing this sick game, this game of -"

"And then there were none," Mick says, because he understands.

"Now is _not_ the time, Mr. Rory," Rip says, edging around, hand drifting down to the gun at his belt. "Why don't you come talk some sense into Mr. Snart? He's clearly unwell - and has done something to Gideon -"

Len smirks. "You know what the best part of having root access to a computer system?" he drawls. "You can do a total memory wipe and start all over."

Rip's face goes blotchy with rage. "You - you didn't - Gideon -"

Ray is looking from one to the other to the other, his eyes wide, his lip trembling. Sara is still in shock, though her hands are reaching for her weapons by instinct.

"Oh, Rip, Rip, Rip," Len says, shaking his head. "It's very classic starship captain of you, falling for an AI, but I must say, you are aware that having feelings doesn't actually excuse you from calling _my partner_ \- what was it again?"

"A useless arsonist with the IQ of meat," Mick says, very slow but very sure. He remembers the very phrase. 

Len’s blood boils with rage.

"I've already apologized for that -"

"No," Len says. "You didn't. You didn't apologize for that. You didn't apologize for driving Mick to the point of rebellion, then using that rebellion to try to drive Mick away from me - god only knows what would've happened then. Maybe the Time Masters would've picked him up. Maybe they would have _hurt_ him, just to try to get to you." He lifts his head. "Gideon," he drawls. "I want you to -"

"No, Gideon!" Rip shouts. "Don't listen to him! Spaniel Broad Tricycle! I'm your captain, and I order you to -"

Len takes the last two steps and shoves his knife into Rip's throat. 

"I hate it when he orders people around," Len says conversationally to a horrified Ray and Sara as Rip clutches futilely at his throat.

Len pulls out his gun, holds it to Rip's eye, and shoots.

It wasn't the _most_ painless death, but somehow Len thinks his angel will forgive him.

Sara lifts her weapons a second too late to stop any of it.

Ray is still frozen in horror. "Oh god,” he says. “Oh _god_. I – you really did it. You’re really the one who’s been killing everybody.”

“Bingo, boy scout,” Len says. “Sorry. _Eagle_ scout.”

“But - why?" Ray asks, stepping forward.

“Ray, don’t engage,” Sara says. Her eyes are brimming with tears. “There’s nothing left.”

“I don’t believe that,” Ray says, taking another step forward. “We saved Rip.”

“He just _killed_ Rip.”

“And Rip killed you,” Ray says. “There’s good in him, Sara. I'm sure of it.”

“Of course there is,” Len says. “I’m great.”

“You wouldn’t hurt us,” Ray says confidently. “You wouldn’t hurt –”

"You?” Len asks, arching his eyebrows. “I wouldn’t hurt _you_ , boy scout?”

Ray falters.

Now it’s Len’s turn to step closer. “You’re the one who got Mick trapped in the gulag,” Len says, and his voice is very low, and very soft. “You’re the one who saved him, and made him want to save you. You’re the one who went to the Oculus – you’re the one who didn’t think of another plan, just went straight for the suicide play. You’re why Mick took your place.”

“Snart…” Ray says weakly.

“You promised to be Mick's _partner_ ,” Len hisses. “You told him you’d take my place – and then you ditched him like yesterday’s news as soon as Nate came around. Wanted someone more _intellectual_ , did you? Someone more like you? You said you’d be his _partner_. He offered to be yours, and you _squandered_ the chance. The priceless _gift_ he was offering you.”

“I – I didn’t –”

“You didn’t what? Didn’t mean to? Didn’t _have his back_?”

“Snart –”

“I’m done,” Len announces. “I’m done with you, you waste of space.”

“What does that mean?” Ray asks, eyes wide with terror.

“What does it mean?” Len asks. “It means - Gideon, _now!_ "

Both Ray and Sara immediately flinch and duck, expecting – who even knows what they’re expecting.

Len uses the moment of distraction to shoot Ray in the head.

Nice and quick. Just like he likes it.

People like Raymond always look at the speeches and not enough at the gun.

Sara cries out with rage and attacks Len dead on.

She's a former League of Assassins member. The fight is short and brutal and not in Len's favor.

She kicks him in the ribs; he grunts and staggers back. She leaps forward to take advantage of it, still wary in case it’s a trap.

It’s not.

Soon enough, he's pinned down on the ground, her batons at his throat, a deadly assassin straddling his waist to keep him down.

If she was wise, she’d kill him right away.

She’s not.

“How could you?” Sara snarls at him, tears streaming down her face. “How could you? They were our _team_.”

“They _hurt_ him,” Len tells her.

“You _killed_ them!”

“Yeah,” he says. “And I’ll kill you too, if I can.”

“What is _wrong_ with you?” she cries out.

"You," he says, looking up at her. "You were the _Captain_. You let them abuse him. You mocked him. You isolated him. You ignored his pain, his depression, his _suicidal_ streak. I could have lost him forever because of you. How could I? How could _you_?"

“I didn’t abuse anybody!” she screams at him. “You _monster_. You – what _are_ you?”

"I’m a serial killer,” Len says. “Obviously.”

“We were supposed to – you let me think we had a future together!”

Len rolls his eyes. “That was always more in the nature of a playdate,” he drawls.

“A – a what?”

“I wanted to know if you might want to rob banks with us,” he clarifies. “Consider the offer revoked, by the way.”

“You didn’t,” she says, shaking her head. “You came back wrong – something with the Oculus –”

“I’ve always been like this,” he says. “I told you when you wanted me to ditch Mick – you put him down, I put _you_ down first. And I did.”

She snarls at him again, half-grief, half-feral rage. “You bastard,” she says. “I’m going to enjoy killing you.”

“No, you’re not,” Len says.

“We could’ve been something, Leonard,” she says, shaking her head. “We really could’ve been.”

“Sara,” Len says, gentling his voice. “How many times must I tell you – I’ve _never_ been staring at your ass.”

“ _What_?”

“You have to understand,” Len says. “You’re nice. You’re clever, you’re fast, you hit things really hard. All traits I appreciate in a person. But –”

“But?”

“You mean nothing to me," Len says honestly. "Not next to the angel."

"Angel? What angel?" 

Len smiles, one of his rarer smiles, soft and vulnerable. "My angel, for whom I sacrifice everything.” His smile widens. “The one who loves me _back_."

Sara opens her mouth, rearing back a little.

"Mick, now, please," Len adds.

The blast of the heat gun hits her dead on in the back. The White Canary wears the least plausible outfit imaginable - bare arms, open areas, fabric that is nowhere near what it needs to be to stop flame. Every time before, she's had to dodge it; she never felt the full range of its fury.

She screams in agony and rears up.

Len wrenches a hand loose and shoves her own knife into her chest.

"Bye-bye, Sara," he says as the blood spurts out, staining his clothing and her pristine costume. "Was nice knowing you - and hey, look on the bright side. With Darkh dead, maybe your sister will live."

She opens her mouth for something - some last curse, some last something - but he presses his lips to hers, cutting her off.

"For the Oculus," he says when he pulls back.

The light fades out of her eyes.

"It's not nice," Mick says, his voice shaking. "It's not nice to kiss other people, Len. Not in front of me."

"Sorry," Len says, and even means it. "Won't do it again. Pass me some rope?"

Mick rolls his eyes. "Serial killers and their stupid rituals," he says, but he does pass along the rope, and watch patiently as Len binds the bodies, even going to the hallway to collect Nate.

It takes some doing, but then they're all done, they're all bound, a glorious glut of sacrifices, and his angel looks upon Len with love the whole time. It could not be more perfect if he tried.

And when it's done, when Len finishes and goes to him, Mick pulls him into his arms.

"Lenny," he whispers. "I missed you _so much_ , Lenny. Never do that again."

"I won't."

Mick laughs, his voice wet and sobbing, tears streaming down his face. "Good."

Len hums happily.

"Did you have to kill them all, though?" Mick asks. "I put a lot of effort into keeping them alive, you know."

"Oh, I'll bring them back if that's what you want," Len says flippantly. 

"Back? What do you mean, back?"

"We have Gideon," Len says. "And that spear thing everyone was after. A little death or eight is hardly a problem. But you know what, Mick? I killed them, and I sacrificed them, and I didn't regret one minute of it. You know why?"

Mick looks at Len, tilting his head slightly to the side in question.

"I saw what they did," Len says savagely. "They didn't respect you. They insulted you. They _hurt_ you."

Mick laughs shakily and gathers Len into his arms. "They weren't that bad. There were some good points."

"There's always some good with the bad," Len says grimly. "That's how they convince you to stay."

"I'm not staying," Mick says. "Not with them, dead or alive. Not when I could have _you_."

Len draws him close.

His Mick.

His angel.

His -

"Was that a _squeak_?" Len says suspiciously.

"Uh," Mick says. "In your spying, did you happen to see Ratigan?"

" _Who?_ "

"Guess not. He’s, uh…”

“He’s _what_?”

“My new pet rat."

Len groans.

"You'll love him! Really!"

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

The Spear is remarkably easy to use, at least in Len's still slightly Oculus-affected hands, anyway. Just put it together and think hard about reconstituting the bodies – just the Legends, of course.

No one really cares about the Legion. Though in deference to keeping the timeline intact, Len does put Darkh back in his own proper timeline, prior to any interference. 

“Sara’s just going to have to find another way to save Laurel, I guess,” Len says.

Mick gives Len a disappointed look.

“Oh, _fine_. Laurel is – uh – her body got stolen after she was buried, then she was resurrected by an evil cult, which she defeated in their entirety, and now she’s living under self-imposed witness protection in Keystone just in case.”

The spear hums cheerfully in response.

“You know, you’re rather cute,” Len tells it.

“ _No_ , Lenny,” Mick says.

“You have a pet rat.”

“ _Not the same_.”

“Sure it is,” Len says. “Those mean people just cracked you into pieces, didn’t they?” he coos to the spear. “You didn’t like that, no you didn’t…”

The spear purrs.

“I think I’m going to name you Spearmint. Get it, Mick? _Spear_ -mint?”

Mick groans.

“You sure you want them back alive?” Len asks, looking at the wholly reconstituted corpses, each one strapped into a chair. “We could just go back to 2016, tell everyone they’re ready for burial…”

“I’m sure.”

“But…”

“Jax is just a kid,” Mick says firmly. “Kids ought to get second chances.”

“And Stein?”

“I like ordering him around. It’s funny watching his ego struggle with it.”

“Hm. Nate?”

“Harmless idiot. Hey, what’d you do with Amaya?”

“Sent her back to the 1940s.”

“Hm. Can you get her timeline back on track?”

“Probably. Want me to?”

“Eh, wait on it. We can always fix it later.”

“What about Ray?”

“He’s an idiot,” Mick says. “But I can forgive him the partner thing because I don’t need him anymore. I’ve got you back. You know how it is – sure, he’s an idiot, but he’s our idiot.”

“Fine, fine. But _Rip and Sara_? Must we?”

“Boss. Just bring them back.”

“Bring them back,” Len tells the spear. “Just as they were at the moment before their deaths. Just that, thanks; no other edits.”

The spear hums, and reality changes.

The Legends wake up, each one as they died.

Jax blinks. “Hey,” he says. “Lights came back on.”

“Hey, Jax,” Len drawls.

“Snart?! Holy crap! You’re back! Grey – hey, Grey – Snart’s back somehow!”

“Yes, yes, I know, he – Jefferson! You’re all right!”

“I love the peanut gallery,” Len says to Mick, lounging in the captain’s chair, petting the spear in his lap. Mick rolls his eyes and hands Len his pet rat to pet instead.

Much like Mick predicted, Len and Ratigan hit it off immediately. It’s not Len’s fault – Ratigan’s cute and fluffy and Mick likes him. That’s more than enough for Len to approve. 

Not that he won’t kill the beast in a second if he ever acts against Mick, but that’s a given.

Besides, Len’s been on Mick to get himself a therapy animal for years.

(Mick never suggested that Len get one, claiming that Len would be more likely to just kill it, which – rude. Len would totally not. Probably.)

“Welcome back,” Len says to the remaining Legends, particularly the ones who wake up less disoriented and more terrified. 

He brought them back just as they were before they died so that they could have those vivid last few moments, their deaths coming for them, _Len_ coming for them.

“Mr. Snart,” Rip says. His voice is – 

Len smiles.

He doesn’t normally enjoy fear, but damnit, sometimes you’ve just got to enjoy the moment at hand. 

“So you were all very bad,” he says, leaning back in the chair, crossing his legs with a smirk. “Very bad. You shouldn’t be so mean to your teammates. Can we agree on that?”

When no one says anything, other than confused sounds from Jax and Nate, Len says, “I would like to hear you agree on that.”

“Agreed,” Ray says hastily. 

The others follow along soon enough. Rip’s eyes particularly seem fixated on the completed spear in Len’s hand.

“So,” Len says. “The Legion has been defeated. I’d say this is time for a party, wouldn’t you?”

“Sounds like party time to me,” Mick rumbles.

The others – even Jax and Nate, now that whispers have informed them that they are at the mercy of a serial killer with a reality-controlling spear – stare at them. 

“Party,” Sara says flatly.

Looks like she’s holding a grudge.

“Gideon,” Len says.

“Yes, Mr. Snart?” Gideon’s voice is crisp and clear as ever, and Len can see Rip sag with relief.

After all, Len had only _hypothesized_ that root access could let you wipe a machine. Not that he’d actually done it. After all, Gideon alone on board had not mocked Mick and had, with his consent, even helped him deal with his pyromania somewhat.

“Set course to the Library of Alexandria, the day before it burned,” Len says. “I think we might want to check out a few books, then sit back and watch the show.”

“You get me the nicest presents,” Mick tells Len.

“I do, don’t I?” Len says, smirking. “Need to make up the whole dying thing to you; figured I’d get a head start.”

“Best present _ever_ ,” Nate enthuses. “Oh my _god_. The Library of Alexandria.”

“He’s a _serial killer_ ,” Sara hisses at him. “He killed all of us.”

“Yeah, but he brought us back,” Jax says. 

“The Library of Alexandria could have some fascinating scientific treatises,” Stein says. He’s avoiding Len’s eyes, but he knows his death could have been much worse, and that natural ego of his is coming back to help him get through.

“Killer! He! Killed! Us!”

“Maybe Sara should be in the brig for this mission,” Len says mildly. “She seems disturbed – and after all that effort I put into resurrecting her sister.”

Sara freezes.

“Maybe if she behaves, I’ll even tell her where I put her,” Len concludes.

“Are they good guys or bad guys?” Ray whispers. His eyes are still a bit round with terror.

“Neither,” Len tells him and smirks. “We’re _villains_.”

\-----------------------------------------------------------------

“So we’ve recovered the jump ship from the 1940s,” Len says. “Amaya’s back in place, the Legends are carrying forward the stop-the-aberrations missions, all except Firestorm, which has gone to join Laurel in protecting Keystone, thereby giving Jax an opportunity to attend college like a normal person and for Stein to go back to _teaching_ college, like a normal professor, much to the relief of Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Stein.”

“That’s right,” Mick replies.

“We’ve created a duplicate of the jump ship which we’re keeping for our own personal entertainment use, which we’ve agreed to split with Firestorm when they come by.”

“I still want you to come meet Georgie sometime.”

“And we stole Spearmint from everybody ever and hid him away where only we can access.”

“I can’t believe you _named_ the Spear of Destiny.”

“Well, I wasn’t going to call him the _Holy Lance_ , was I?”

“Still can’t believe you named it.”

“Says the man with a pet rat.”

“I keep telling you, me having a pet rat for therapy and affection is _not_ the same as you having a reality-bending spear on hand. Even _if_ you name it.”

“It’s not like I’m going to use him much! He’s tired. He wants rest. Probably for a least a few years.”

Mick rolls his eyes.

“And we’re back in 2017 where we belong,” Len concludes. “No more time travelling for us.”

“Agreed.”

“Only one question, then.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah. Now what? After that, everything seems like it’s going to be pretty dull…”

“Hey, Snart!” Barry says, zipping in front of them. “Heard you guys were back – heh, hilarious story, do you know that Sara somehow got the idea that _you_ were a serial killer? So silly. I’ve told them that you _hunt_ serial killers, you aren’t actually one, but whatever – anyway! I’ve got, like, three new cases for you to work on, if you’re interested. Uh, well, two are serial killers, one is a God of Speed, which, uh, I know isn’t entirely in your usual serial killer bailiwick but is _totally_ your style as a supervillain, right? All about slowing people down, right?”

Len blinks, trying to process the overwhelming rush of words.

“Somehow,” Mick says dryly, “I don’t think we’ll be too bored.”

**Author's Note:**

> Warnings: graphic depictions of violence. Len kills much of the Legends cast, often while mocking them, though it's not permanent.


End file.
